Friday Harbor!

We finally took our Maiden Voyage to Friday Harbor today, and all went well. We launched at Washington Park in Anacortes on a rapidly falling -1.7 tide, and JUST made it. The girls (Amanda spent the day with us) held onto the boat while I raced the truck and trailer up to the parking lot, then we quickly started the motor and shoved off, motor tilted up so as to avoid hitting the bottom.

Once underway we hit some fairly rough going across the channel, and had really more wave action than we would have liked all the way to Friday Harbor. We did 20-25 mph most of the way, so we were slamming around pretty hard. Skagits really are hard riders. Several times during the trip Fran and I exchanged that what-did-we-get-ourselves-into look.

The Evinrude seemed to work fine, if a lot noisier than we'd been led to believe. Well, it is a 2-cycle after all, so I should have known. We plugged our ears with paper and put the back curtain down, which helped a little. It was certainly too rough to open up to more than 4000 rpm. We had departed Washington Park in Anacortes at 11:45. We arrived in Friday Harbor at 12:55.



Fran has been talking about her "picnic boat" for years, so it should be noted that today we had our first official picnic on her boat! And Martha and Linton, in your honor they were Grand Lake Sandwiches.

Yummm.


We walked around Friday Harbor being tourists. I took a half hour nap in the cabin. We all had ice cream. Beautiful day all around. And Welike, though one of the smallest boats in the harbor, looked just fine.
We left Friday Harbor around 4:30 and enjoyed much calmer waters all the way back. Throttled back to around 3000 rpm for most of the trip, which gave us a cruising speed of around 20-24 mph, and that seemed a lot more comfortable. It will take a while before we know how to get the best performance and the most comfort out of the Skagit.

Amanda drove most of the way home and enjoyed it a lot – although she can't exactly see the point in doing something for "fun" that is a stressful as this day's cruise started out to be.



Home at last, after our very successful first outing. Can't wait for next Saturday's club cruise, a circumnavigation of Fidalgo Island.