September 4, 2004
At Sea (N 47o 20' W 125o 33')
Neah Bay was a bee hive of activity on Friday afternoon. The week end before Labor Day seems to be when everybody leaves Canada to go home. Most of the boats we bound for the Columbia River (Astoria or Portland) though a few were going further. We took the opportunity of a nearby store and stocked up on a few provisions and took nice long showers in the shore side facilities. It may be a week before we take another shower.
We departed Neah Bay at 0600, 30 minutes before sunrise, and motored out past Cape Flattery. The wind soon came up out of the South West, and while that's not the direction we would have preferred the strength was perfect so we set the 115% (probably the first time this sail has been used!) and began beating into the low swell.
I think a lot of sailors discount sailing up wind. In the right conditions, I prefer it to sailing downwind. The wind pressing on the sails keeps the boat more stable and it is much more comfortable then rolling downwind. This was one of those days. We sailed all morning in this fine breeze and only had to motor for a couple of hours in the afternoon.
Even though there's been a ban on all fishing activities by the rest of the crew, I managed to sneak the drag line over the side for a few hours. As luck would have it there are a few Coho still off shore and I hooked one, bringing in and vacuum bagging it whole. We'll have it when we arrive in San Francisco. While cleaning this fish I just let the lures drag about 5 feet behind the boat, I figured they'd be 'safe' there. However, we almost caught another fish right there! Both myself and the aforementioned crew saw a fish strike at the lure. This prompted the afore mentioned crew to remove the lure from the water entirely, lest we actually hook another animal.
People often ask how we manage when we're at sea for an extended time. Of course, someone has to be awake and looking for obstacles at all times. To accomplish this we trade off, every four hours. We're trying a new schedule this time, here's how it goes:
0600-1000
1000-1400
1400-1600 ('1st Dog watch')
1600-1800 ('2nd Dog watch')
1800-2200
2200-0200
0200-0600
The two 'Dog watches' (don't ask me why they're called that, I used to know but not any more) make it so you don't have to stand the dreaded 2200-0200 watch every night.
When one is 'on watch' they have a timepiece, appropriately named 'The Watch', which is set up with an alarm that goes off every 10 minutes. When the alarm sounds it is the responsibility of the person on watch to look at the sea around the boat and make sure there's no ships or other boats that might run us down. Every hour, the person on watch writes our position in the log. That's about all there is, except for sail handling and writing blog reports. If you're off watch there's really only one activity: Sleep. Or at least try to sleep. It's pretty hard to get up at two in the morning for a watch if you haven't had at least a little rest. Oh, there's one other thing you have to do when you're on watch and that is be vewy vewy quite. You don't want to wake up the off watch!
Well that's all for now, it's 0100 and I have an hour left to go before I get to take a nap. I hope I can make it.
John
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