The Taco Traveler

After going so hard for so long, it's a shock to the system to slow down, to steady the pace. I sit in a quiet, downstairs cafe in the sleepy town of Port Townsend, Washington, and I can't help but think: TIMING. Wind, currents, wave periods, boat prep, safe ports, car-borrowing, house-selling, relationships.

This town is so full of sailors, which makes it a great place to get important work done on a boat. And it also makes it the sort of place where nobody is in a hurry. Being in a hurry can be deadly to sailors. Try to beat that storm into port, and get slammed into the jetty as you cross the bar. Underestimate the speed of that freighter so you can lazily avoid a gybe, and get run down; on the freighter, chances are they won't even notice. No, we don't do that. Sailors generally are the over-the-counter brand of adventurers: safe and sane. When you're not in a hurry, you can plan things; you can wait for fair winds.

Tonight, the winds are with us, and if we time it just right, when we're ready to leave the Strait of Juan de Fuca and turn left (well, sort of left, to the SE), they'll be just shifting around to the East to blow us out to sea. Later Thursday or Friday they're supposed to shift to the North, blowing us down the coast to our first stopping point, either Astoria, Oregon, or, hopefully Newport, Oregon.

I'm the only customer in this cafe. There's a guy, slightly homeless-looking (like so many PT residents), but I think he's a reformed busker waiting for a bigger audience. That is to say, I think he's a busker who's convinced a coffee shop owner that he's actually just free entertainment. I look at my watch and I see that's it's almost time to go - to pick up my skipper-for-hire from the ferry dock, get a few hours of sleep, vacate the slip, and head out to sea. I never thought I’d wear a watch, but then I found this one. It’s a Baume & Mercier but I can't remember the model. Not ostentatious, just nice. White face, stainless band, real numbers.... Classic. I've already promised it to Grady someday but it will probably have to be after I’m gone because even now I can't get myself to take it off long enough to get it repaired and serviced (it's got a pin loose in the band that I have to push back in five times a day - if I don't keep track of it I could lose the thing entirely. It could probably use a re-waterproofing, too). "You want how long to ship it to Switzerland and back?" I should just bite the bullet and ship it off one of these days - it would suck to lose it overboard or something because of the broken band (and it is promised away). Besides, I'll need to hand one down to Ty, too, and a second watch to mark this completely new phase of my life couldn't hurt.

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I’m back on the boat now after having picked up the captain from Vashon. I went for more groceries while Capt. Rich looked at the forecasts. It looks pretty good for getting to Newport, but farther along could get hairy. There’s a major storm forecast mid-next week. Basically, we have until 4pm or so on Tuesday to get into a port or we’ll get slammed by some ugly winds (40-60 knot) and ugly 25-foot swells. If we can’t make it to Brookings, OR, then I’ll probably end up getting Rich a rental car and sending him home while I wait out the potentially 7-10 days I could be stuck in Newport waiting for the next storm and its residual swells to pass. Maybe I’d come back, too, if it looks like it might be that long. After the weather clears again, if Rich has returned home, I may just hop down the coast on my own. We’ll see. I’m not making any decisions right now based on a forecast that’s 8 days out.

It’s time to grab 6 hours of sleep before heading out early in the morning with the outgoing current. The next “real” storm is just now forming way out in the Pacific, and the surfing meteorologists are getting stoked. It’s funny how useful this site is, where they root for gnarly storms and I watch their predictions and hope, in this case, that they’re wrong from next Tuesday onward: http://www.stormsurf.com/page2/forecast/forecast/current.shtml

TT / STA / Sean

... read this post. There is absolutely no reason why you should care about this post, but in the tradition of bloggers everywhere, I'm going to put it out there for everyone to see, for no particular reason.
 
I woke this morning to 30-knot winds whistling in the rigging, with gusts up to 43. There were whitecaps in the marina in the 300-ton TravelLift area. For the first time in a while, happy to be in the marina, still.

I drove around and found the only bar in town that had a big TV and had the Seahawks game on. Well, not the only bar, but the only one that tolerates non-residents, so says the boyfriend of the barista-girl, sitting at his perch guarding his girl, unseen, near the back of the roadside coffee stand. "Well, there's also the Hilltop Tavern, but they don't have mixed drinks there. They also don't allow non-locals." Ugh. Okay, dude.

After watching the Seahawks poor performance, I roamed around Henery Hardware (no, that's not a typo, it's Henery) for about an hour and put anything in my basket that I thought might be good or interesting on the boat. To wit:

- A can opener (duh)
- Electrical tape (can always use more)
- Duct tape (ditto)
- Misc screw kit
- Smoke / CO alarm (have needed this for a while)
- Wooden spoon set
- Oil filter wrench
- Magnet lite
- 150 yds of 65# test fishing line (to go with the offshore pole/reel combo I got yesterday)
- Chef's cooking tongs (love 'em)
- A copper-bottomed, whistling tea kettle
- Hacksaw and add'l blades
- Several misc-sized S.S. hose clamps (spares)

There. Nothing more to say other than, yes, I'm still hoping to get out of here soon. Possibly Thursday or Friday, after this Tuesday/Wednesday storm blows through.

TT