After a brief shore leave in Boise, the skipper was back aboard Perception in Bellingham. San Juan Sailing had kindly leased us an vacant dock for a week, and we felt comfortable leaving her alone under their watchful care. As the end of the week neared, I needed to leave the slip to allow its normal occupant to return.

This was my first opportunity to really single-hand Perception, taking her out to anchor all alone. Thursday dawned with light winds, so I didn’t wait for help from the dock. I pulled the lines aboard and eased her out of Squalicum Harbor before boat activity picked up.

My plan was to go out to Chuckanut bay, just a short trip south. I’d never anchored in the north end of the bay, and it looked quite protected from any weather other than winds from the south. I motored into the bay and found a wide open anchorage. I picked a spot with plenty of room to swing and at least for the moment seemed to have less wind than the rest of the bay.

Dropping the hook alone was a bit interesting. There was about 7 knots of wind blowing, just enough to continually push the bow away from the anchor. The exercise involved constantly running between the anchor control at the bow and the helm engine controls, trying to keep enough chain coming out while also keeping the bow pointed at the wind. Once I had enough chain out I bridled up and pulled back – Perception had dug in for the duration!

I found Chuckanut bay to be quite pleasant for an extended stay. Fortunately I have always liked trains, both the noise of them and watching them. The rail line stretched around about 50% of my view along the edge of the bay

Thus began my lonely but busy watch. I was of course still working my day job, and had a fairly extensive list of things to do before we went offshore. My plan was to take care of as many of these as possible:

• Install third reef line
• Set up bowsprit tack line
• Clean off dinghy davit shackle corrosion
• Set up dinghy motor mount on stern pushpit
• Remove corroded dinghy motor lock
• Set up fishing pole and tackle box for offshore
• Find and plan straps for Dinghy
• Install weather routing software
• Install new chart plotter Navionics card
• Change saildrive oil
• Change oil in watermaker high-pressure pump

Over the course of the five days I spent in Chuckanut Bay, I was able to do many of these with the exception of getting the motor lock off and getting the third reef line run (though I did get the attachment points tied on to the sail).

Probably my biggest triumph here was figuring out how to change the saildrive oil effectively. I’d been warned by both our maintenance company and by a fellow at the Yanmar distributor (our engines and saildrives are Yanmars) that it was very hard to get the oil out of the saildrive unless you were out of the water and used the bottom drain plug. Since hauling the boat out really wasn’t in the cards for us, I needed to suck the oil out through the suction drain in the engine compartment.

I first tried to use my drill motor pump which I used to change the engine oil, but couldn’t pull anything out of the saildrive with it. I also happened to have a 6 liter oil change pump that I’d never used with the engine oil change – mostly because our maintenance crew said they were much less effective than a drill pump. I connected this thing to the starboard side and was able to slowly extract the oil – all the oil, surprisingly.

The extraction was taking quite a while and near continuous pumping until I discovered that even a small air leak where the pump met the saildrive would greatly limit the extraction. Once I sealed this up effectively, I only had to charge the pump a few times to get out all the oil – amazing and wonderful!

On Tuesday our crew for the Pacific Coast Passage was set to arrive. Grace was coming in that evening, and our good friends Marty and Tom were arriving on the flight from Boise with her. I had secured a slip from San Juan Sailing again for the night, so that morning I pulled anchor and went in.

I found raising anchor while single handing to be more challenging than setting it. I had about 10 knots of wind when raising, and it was a challenge to motor the boat forward, raise the chain, and keep the chain pile from stacking too high all at the same time. Eventually I managed to get the anchor up, but it was a lot of scrambling around between the helm and the foredeck to get it done.

Coming back into Squalicum Harbor alone was a bit daunting. I’d been practicing lassoing cleats from the boat, and was able to successfully come in alone. My working method is to lasso a dock cleat with our midship line since it’s right outside the helm station. That keeps me close to the engine controls while I do the lasso. Once the midship is secure, I can lasso both the bow and stern before shutting down engines and stepping off the boat. Light winds certainly helped this time!

The crew arrived Tuesday evening as planned, and Wednesday morning we left Squalicum Harbor, very likely for the last time on Perception. We motored south to Anacortes, pulling in to Cap Sante Marina around mid-day. Our plan was to provision in Anacortes since there is a grocery very close to the marina and we were without ground transportation. This worked out quite well for us – Grace doing most of the shopping to set us up with meals all the way to San Francisco.

We also completed some of those unfinished tasks on my list. With Marty’s help, Tom did the honors to cut off the dinghy motor lock using our battery-powered angle grinder. We were then able to lift the motor onto the stern pushpit, removing that significant weight from the dinghy davits for the trip down the coast.

Note to self – always, always, always do a good job cleaning up metal dust or filings. In this case I did not, and ended up with clusters of little rust spots on the dinghy and boat hull anywhere they later scattered. Ugh! Scrubbing was the penance for that carelessness.

That evening we treated ourselves to dinner on shore, with a trip down Commercial Avenue to Adrift. We found seating in the outdoor area and enjoyed the fresh air and company.

Thursday was the big decision day for us in terms of our next direction. We had joined the Coho Ho Ho rally for support and camaraderie in getting down the coast. The Coho was officially launching on Sunday from Port Townsend, with meet-ups and parties planned for the preceding days. Our original plan was to head to Port Townsend and join in the festivities.

Weather presented us with a different plan. The forecasts were agreeing that Friday would offer a relatively atypical situation in the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Winds would be blowing from the east out the strait, giving us following seas and a nice downwind sail. Conversely, waiting to leave until Sunday would see strong northwesterlies blowing in our face down the strait. It didn’t take much discussion to convince ourselves we should abandon the Coho festivities and get ourselves up to Neah Bay on Friday. So for Thursday we headed out past Port Townsend to Port Angeles.

We were able to get a slip at Boat Haven Marina in Port Angeles. It was a fine place to stay, but quite a slog to get to a restaurant. Beyond a secure dock for the night we didn’t find our visit there particularly appealing.

The one interesting happenstance of this leg was our chance encounter with Chinook Sunset in the middle of the Strait of Juan de Fuca. They are another Coho boat, also a Lagoon catamaran, and were headed towards Port Townsend while we were pointed at Port Angeles. We hailed them as we passed, and exchanged good wishes for the coming voyage.

Friday we headed out for Neah Bay, motoring and sailing up the strait in that gentle easterly that was predicted. Neah Bay was the last chance to anchor in a protected bay before rounding Cape Flattery and heading down the coast.

Shortly after anchoring we were startled by several loud BOOMs coming from shore. It quickly became apparent that people there were lighting off fireworks. As evening descended, they were joined by a magnificent fireworks display celebrating Makah Days. We hadn’t done our research, and might have gone ashore had we known before hand.

The fireworks seemed a great symbolic send-off for Perception. We tucked in for the night in anticipation of the start of our first offshore passage in the morning.