ECHO Echo echo

That's right, we're in Echo Bay at Sucia Island right now. I think I posted something here this morning, but that seems like a long time ago and I forget what it was already. So I'll just fill you in from Port Townsend onward.

We left yesterday around noon and mucked around in light winds and contrary tides for an hour or so until we finally cleared Point Wilson and met the filling westerly coming off the Strait. It stayed somewhat light until we got up around Partridge Bank... a large and comfortable-looking trimaran breezed past us there, the only other recreational boat we saw during the crossing. But shortly afterward, the wind built to around twelve knots and steadied and we shot up to Cattle Pass at 7.5 knots under blue skies. The ride was smooth and stable... not that there was much chop. Still, it's nice to have a boat that will do seven and a half knots in twelve knots on the beam, and stay as steady as if we were only in five knots.

We ducked in around Cattle Point and spent the night near a small Coast Guard cutter in Griffin Bay. It's not a commonly used anchorage and no one else stopped in that night.

Mandy slept in this morning but took the first shift dealing with light and flukey winds up through San Juan Channel. I failed to buy a tide and current book, thinking that the tiny free one we had would get us up to Canada, and that we could buy the Canadian tables more cheaply there and wouldn't get much use out of the American ones. Besides, I imagined I could easily rely on my cell phone to look up such references as we needed until we got to a chandlery in BC.

But T-mobile has no service in the lower part of San Juan Channel (and very little here in Echo Bay!) so I mostly just had to guess. But guessing, or luck, or whatever, served us well enough, and we sailed all but the last forty-five minutes or so of the route today.

The weather report gave us a little concern with our chosen anchorage this evening... this morning they were calling for winds gusting to 40 knots from the southwest tonight. Echo Bay (where we've never been before) is well-protected against the seasonally more-common northwesterlies, but looked as if it might do in a southwesterly as well. But all day today, what were supposed to be southwesterlies manifested as southeasterlies or just plain easterlies, both of which have a fearsome reputation for shaking up the oft-crowded Echo Bay anchorage.

We found as likely a spot as we could to guard against that possibility, but the forecast has altered since both to reflect the actual wind direction (they are grudgingly allowing that it might blow from the south, after all) and a lower magnitude. Right now, it's dead calm out. But we got a good set on the anchor and a six to one scope out all the same.

Those southerlies should help whisk us north to Vancouver tomorrow if all goes well.