Port Townsend - End of Trail

We finally left Saturna and headed south. The plan was to clear customs in Friday Harbor and hang there for a day; however, the wind and currents where with us and we managed to arrive outside of Friday Harbor about an hour ahead of schedule. The tide was still ebbing like crazy, so we decided to ride it out of Cattle pass and make our way to Port Townsend for the Wooden Boat Festival. We made it to the boat haven pretty earlier and cleared customs before everything shut down at 5. We even managed to get a nice comfortable slip for the week while we provisioned for our trip to San Francisco and fixed anything that needed attention before we headed off shore.
High on my list was dealing with a sticky engine throttle, and thoroughly checking out the rigging. Things went mostly well, except when I had the local rigging shop go over my rigging, they confirmed what I had suspected all along, the rigging was pretty much shot and needed to be replaced. We even found some cracks in some of the swage fittings. Bummer.
So the question becomes, can we fix it and still make San Fran before the season turns or are we stuck here. After beating my head for a week trying to do the impossible, I finally relax and try to remember that those boaters on a schedule are the ones that most frequently get screwed. Besides, this is supposed to be fun, right? The decision is made to postpone the trip and just enjoy the boat show.

The Lady Washington with her Pirate paint job.

After hanging out in Port Townsend a week we decide to go ahead and have Port Townsend Rigging rerig her for us.
It is mid September and I got a B-day coming up, so it is time to head back to Colorado to see if our house is still there. It takes us several days to unload the boat and get ready for the big drive home.
Overall we had a fantastic summer, with some of the best weather you could possible ask for. It never rained and the skies where mostly just clear and blue. We met a whole bunch of great people and we managed to put 700 nm on the boat with out any major incidents. Now if I can just talk my wife into selling the house :-)

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(5/13/2004) - After mulling over the decision all winter we are glad we didn't head south. We will now cruise another summer up here and will probably stay up for a third season. Also, other cruisers that left that weekend got pounded by some serious gales. I heard that some even had to get rescued by the CG.