I met the excited new owners of the boat Saturday morning in Port Townsend. Having looked at the weather on Wednesday we thought that heading out into 35 knots and on a Friday and that Friday being the 13th was unnecessary.

She was a fine example of Perry, nostalgia and Taiwanese boat building.

Before casting off one should go through the essentials. Check oil, coolant, raw water strainer, and stuffing box. Fluids all looked good let’s find that packing gland.

Some packing glands are easier to reach than others…

After removing everything from the lazeratte and once inside said lazeratte I found a hatch that granted “access” to the stuffing box. It seems like this should be easier to reach but like most sailboats; engine room and access is an afterthought. The packing gland was dripping nicely once in gear and loaded and I was happy.

We untied her grassy dock lines and headed to the fuel dock. We were running late. The owner showed me the electronic flare that he had purchased to meet our USCG requirements. Unfortunately, he forgot the batteries. Back to the store to get C batteries.

Having missed the slack water we were in time for the rodeo. The Panda 40 is a heavy displacement sailboat modeled off the rescue boats of the late 1800s. Built for the roughest of conditions these early Colin Archer designs were modified into what would become private sailing yachts that would circumnavigate the globe with small or single-handed crews. These historic voyages enamored generations to come with their capabilities. Still, they capture people’s imaginations of Everest Capes and turquoise archipelagos. These new boat owners that would be my crew for the next three days had those same dreams. Fueled by youtube DIYers and the thought of leaving the rat race they were selling their house and planning to sail away. The purchase went through the day before and they hadn’t even gone through the boat. The stoke was palpable. The naiveté was as well. Which way does a winch turn? How do you tie a fender on? They weren’t as green as some though. They had taken ASA courses and joined the crew of a Baja Haha but there was much to learn and the conditions we were going to be contending with brought to mind the image of a kid trying to drink from an exploded fire hydrant.

Heading North around Point Wilson on an ebb into a 20 knot North Easterly was a rodeo indeed but it was behind us now and we had unfurled our in-mast furling mainsail and with the wind abaft the beam, cracked sheets. The wind does an interesting thing between Squim and Port Townsend in a NE wind. Instead of directing the wind to a more easterly direction it slows it. Now the wind had gone from 20 to 25 with 6 foot short choppy swells to flat water and 10 knots of wind. The sun was out. The staysail and all unfurled and we weren’t making our 5 plus knot minumum we had run our dead reckoning off so on went the Iron Jenny. The wind filled after an hour or so and moved further aft. We unrolled the sails and winged out the jib and turned off that terrible sounding engine. The sun set and the wind filled and by the time we were at Neah Bay it was blowing 25 with gusts of 35 with wind waves you would expect from an 80 mile fetch.

A vangless inmast furling set up benefits from a preventer. The working end lead aft to a winch.

We had furled the main into what would have been the third reef or even fourth if it had been a normal mainsail. The size at least was that of a triple reefed sail, the weight of the sail however was not appropriate for that kind of pressure or at least for prolonged periods. ( imagine the reason that the sails made for these furlers are so light is so they can fit inside the sailboats mast. The light weight of this laminated taffeta sail was of some concern which made me insist that we let one of the head sails carry more of the load. This load is substantial. 20,000 pounds is 10 tons and the mast and sails are the engine and transmission required to take that load. Unfortunately before we left I inspected the furling headsails by employing a sailmakers trick id learned from my time working at sail lofts. At the fuel dock waiting for C batteries, I dragged my thumbnail over the stitching that held the UV cover on the Genoa and I noticed the thread broke easily. This means that it needs to be resewn and that we would have to nurse it down the coast of Washington. Fortunately, the other headsail; the staysail, was in much better shape and looked like it could be relied on.

The other thing about our inmast furler rigging that was unusual was that we lacked a boom vang. The boom, as a result, would have been bouncing up and down with each puff if we hadn’t put a snubber from the middle of the boom down to the midship deck cleat. This is all well and good but if you run it back to the cockpit there is no winch to tighten it with on all points of sail but a dead down wind with the jib wind out to the opposite side and even then I don’t like sheeting a snubber to the middle of the boom because if the boom hits a wave it can break the boom.

Back to the sea story

We had been planning on doing the passage nonstop but a few hours into the trip when I was drinking a glass of water I noticed it tasted strange. Now it is very common for the water tanks on boats to have a strange and often unpleasant taste and I like to think I have developed a resilience to strange water tank flavors but this was bad. Not only did the water taste strange and chemically but bubbles seamed to stand on the surface longer than they should. There are a number of products people run through their water systems to reduce tank taste or to clean the tanks. Some boat owners even chlorinate their water to prevent growth and bring separate water containers for drinking and making coffee. Super bleached water makes sense if you only use your water for cleaning but we had a first passage with some green soon to be greener sailors aboard and as most people should know, dehydration is a big factor in the onset of motion sickness. All this meant we needed to head in to my favorite Native American Kwik-E mart in Neah Bay to get some water and snacks! Easier said than done. It was now pitch black and all we could see of the waves we were now surfing was their braking crests in the light of our stern light. We were going to have to turn on the motor, furl the jib, and turn into the stampede of waves we had formerly been riding and furl the mainsail. Now the whole point of an inmast furler system is to make sailing easier. Short handing, single handing and lazy sailors love this idea. For those of us that fly symmetrical spinnakers to make things more colorful and complicated this doesn’t make sense. I say beware laziness and easiness and most importantly; systems with many moving parts. When it goes right in perfect conditions it is a testament to the over engineers of the world but when conditions are less than perfect it can go very wrong. I think about partly furled mainsail stuck out like a broken throttle cable on an outboard stuck with the trottle wide open or a tiger shark in your cockpit. I would much rather be able to drop a sail and let gravity help me get it down before it takes me where I don’t want to go or flogged itself to ribbons.

The way the furling mainsail works is there is a mandrill much like the head foil on a jib furling unit inside the mast that is turned by a line that runs back to the cockpit to allow for ether furling or setting the sail. The Cunningham is used to pull the sail out to the end of the boom. This means that three lines need to be coordinated to furl the sail and that’s not including handling the mainsheet. Well as you can imagine it didn’t go so smoothly and the sail accidentally was pulled out all the way by the wind this combined with the small dodger restricting full winch handle turns and single speed winches and and and.

Once in Neah Bay I was glad to see that it was more protected than I imagined it would be with a NE wind. The Store was closed due, we think, to the COvid 19 outbreak so we settled down for a bit of rest before an early rise. It was 3 am before we were in our bunks and 9:30 am before we were clearing the entrance back onto the Strait. It was blowing 30 plus from the East and on our beam which was great because we had 140 miles to go and a date with the first flood on the Columbia River Bar the next day. The Washington Coast in the winter is dangerous because the weather can change quickly and there is 100 miles of coast with no safe harbors to retreat to after that the harbors have dangerous bars that often can only be safely crossed twice a day. On top of that there are crab pots. On top of that these crab pots location and numbers vary every year. These pots weight about 100 pounds and have two, sometimes black, buoys tied to them. They are located from 30 to 300 feet of water. Some places 300 feet of water or 50 fathoms is as far offshore as 30 miles on this coast. Fortunately we weren’t going to be motoring much with the forecast we had. Most boats sail their best with the wind on their beam and if you stay close to the shore you can limit the fetch and stay inside the big windwaves.

Line handling is a foundational skill. If you want to go big, start small.

About a third of the way south down the Washington coast the wind died. To the east of this area are mountains. I was sleeping when this happened. I came up on deck and asked how long we had been going 4 knots. We needed to maintain 5 to make our date with the Columbia river bar and the flood. With the motor on we changed course to meet up with the Crab Lanes. At sunset we had reached them and where back to paralleling the coast on our way south. It is interesting that they decided to put the lanes in the depth many crabbers don’t even fish. I haven’t seen the coast this quiet while the season is open. About 4 am we came to a crabber who was running a line of pots right next to the lane. Further south the crab lanes converge and it doesn’t seem that anyone follows the rules. Crab pots are in the channel as we cross the bar. The sun is just coming up and an we dodge and weave our way across the bar and by the time we get to buoy 10 we are motoring against 3 knots of ebb. We are late. 3 pm and we have gone from the bar to Astoria 11 miles up river.

The harbor master is gone but the gas dock guy assigns us a slip. It has both wind and current pushing off it. We end up in the slip next door. high fives and good vibes ensue as we enjoy the first adult bevy we’ve had in three days.