Ghostsailor's Monthly Update

Lets go Sailing!

We had planned a weekend sail to Liberty Bay to have an Easter Sunday Brunch with Palarran and L'Orien.

We got Ghost off the dock around 3:30 on Friday after Ang and the kids got home. I had helped Rich get L'Orien from Lake Union through the locks and tied up next to Ghost until we could leave and she could be moved into our slip for the night.

We had a great sail across the sound and into Liberty Bay. We even got to sail a little bit next to our neighbor The schooner "Black Opal"

Saturday morning proved to be rainy and cold. That didn't stop us from jumping into the dingy and walking up to the bakery for breakfast.

The kids and I played on deck in the rain until the late afternoon hours when the sun finally started to peak through the clouds. L'Orien and her crew pulled in under full sail around 5:30 and we all started to color eggs for Easter.

    The kids loved all the attention. Palarran pulled in right at dinner time and we all rafted up for the night.

   Ghost had her hook set firmly in 15-20 feet of water with 60 feet of chain. I went to bed with no worries. However, we had three pretty large boats using the same anchor, and during the night the wind had come up to about 15 knots.

I woke up at 4:30 AM, looked out the aft cabin ports at the condos that were on the beach about a mile up the bay. Something didn't seem right. That's because Ghost had dragged her anchor a MILE into 7 feet of water! I quicky climbed out of bed, put my sweatpants on backwards(didn't notice or care) and roused the other boats into action. First we found that surprisingly, we were all still floating our 6 foot keels off the bottom. I sent one person to start cranking up the anchor chain. Ang got Ghost started and we  got everyone on deck. Everyone but the kids. They were awakened, but soon found that the Easter Bunny had come with gifts....so they were busy!

Soon the three skippers agreed that we needed to break up, get into deeper water and anchor alone for the night. We had to be very careful not to let the boats get turned the wrong way and get blown onto the beach that was less than a boat length away. It all worked out and about an hour after I woke up, we were trying to put our now very surgered up kids to sleep.

I was still a little shaken up all sunday. It appears that even though I thought I had enough scope out, I did not. Lesson learned. Yes I said it again........another lesson learned. Will we ever learn them all?

After a wonderful brunch, we were prepairing Ghost for departure when we heard the unmistakable sound of a whale spouting. How could this be? We were only 15 feet of water!? Well, believe it or not, right there 20 or 30 feet away was a young gray whale swimming for all of us to watch! We watching the little guy spouting away for an hour or so. He appeard to be a little lost. We later learned through a whale spotters website that he had been seen by many! Whew! I was glad that we were not the only ones.

After setting the sails on the home stretch across the sound Ang and I let our wild sides out and let Ghost run a little bit under a full suite of sails and 20 knots of wind. I was cautiously watching the wind and water, Ang was hanging on keeping Ghost under control, the kids were crammed into a corner below without a care in the world, and Ghost was running free with the wind in her teeth. We had never been in such conditions.

 It felt good. The boat speed was a consistant 6 plus knots and before we had had enough we saw almost 7! Thats a lot of speed for this big old tub! We had fun though and probably really needed to push ourselves a little.

We all went to bed very early and slept very soundly.

Until our next adventure!!

scty