Anchor up at 5am to have the ebb current wash us out of the Strait – beautiful sunrise
The weather for nearly all of August was fantastic. Blue skies with warm days and cool nights – perfect summer conditions. This weather pattern leads to winds from the NW, which would be perfect for sailing home down the coast.
It was unfortunate, then, that the weather changed to a week of storm fronts just as we were planning to head for home. In Oregon and Washington, storms generally bring wind from the south or southeast, which is exactly the direction we needed to go.
Sounding humpback with an inbound freighter in the distance
Normally we wouldn’t head south with this kind of forecast. Since we are on a bit of a schedule to get back in time for work, we decided to push it a bit and head out anyway.
After a glassy calm passage down the Strait of Juan de Fuca, we entered the Pacific and turned south. What we encountered were winds from 15 to 25 knots exactly from the direction we wanted to go. Blowing over hundreds of miles of open ocean, these winds generated 4 to 7 foot (1- 2m) waves. Normally waves this size are no problem for Madrone or her crew, but when the waves are short period wind chop it can make the going quite a bit more difficult.
Lone orca fishing for salmon in the Strait
The timing of these waves seemed almost exactly wrong. Just as the boat would rise to the top and down the other side of one wave, the next would hit the bow with a sweep of water across the deck and sometimes completely over the top of the dodger. Every 5 minutes or so, the speed of the boat would combine precisely wrong with the wave period to result in the boat dropping from the peak to the valley of the wave with a huge crash.
Tired crew happy to have made it
Slowing down would likely have helped, but we needed to arrive at the Columbia River bar around slack current to cross safely. And with worse weather the following day, we didn’t want to miss our crossing time.
So, we pressed on, somehow managed to arrive at the river bar just in time, and spent the next day cleaning up the boat and soaking up the salt water that found it’s way into all sorts of places it shouldn’t be.
These were by far the worst conditions we encountered in over 3000 miles of sailing this summer, and it’s a bit funny that we found them so close to home.
We entered the Columbia River on a flood tide, and three humpbacks also swam in – first time we’ve seen whales inside the river bar
