SAIL MAGAZINE

At er spending a glorious spring cruising in the Puget Sound and

the Strait of Georgia, we re-entered the United States at Port Angeles

on the Olympic Peninsula. It was a crisp, bright morning when we let

Canoe Cove in British Columbia, but we arrived at Port Angeles in fog

so thick we could not see the lighthouse at the end of the sandspit al-

though we passed it only 300t away.  e low-frequency foghorn blasts

of the ships in the Strait of Juan de Fuca sounded bovine and mournful

as we passed them in the murk.

Our last stop before leaving the Strait of Juan de Fuca was Neah Bay,

part of the Makah American Indian Reservation. It is the site of the

Ozette Village, which was buried by a mudslide in 1560. Nothing was

known of the village until a storm in 1970 exposed some of its remains

and archaeologists have since uncovered six long houses.  e story and

numerous artefacts are displayed in the Makah Museum in the village.

Boats heading south tend to gather here to refuel, discuss weather

and route planning, and to wait for the right weather to leave.  ere

are two strategies for heading south: the inshore route is prone to

coastal hazards such as crab pots, fog and heavy shipping, but gives

you the opportunity to visit ports in Washington and Oregon along

the way.  e of shore route, staying 60 to 100 miles of the coast, is

the faster passage; it has stronger winds and higher seas but adds

extra miles to the voyage.

Many harbors on the Washington coast have bar entrances that are

treacherous when a big Pacii c swell rolls in from the west. We were in-

terested in visiting some of these ports, but they are ot en closed during

bad weather and it’s not uncommon to be locked in for several days. We

were keen to see some of that California sunshine, so we rounded Cape

Flattery and headed of shore.

For the i rst couple of days of the passage we had perfect sailing

conditions; we were 60 miles out, enjoying glorious sunshine and a 15

to 20-knot northerly breeze, and making good time. It was not to last;

soon a small low brought headwinds, then calm, then more fog. Four

days into the passage we were approaching Cape Mendocino, which

has a very bad reputation, and gales were forecast. We decided to sit

out the bad weather in Crescent City, a town lying just south of the

Oregon border. It was our i rst landfall in California. We anchored

inside the breakwater of the river mouth.  ere was not much swell in

PHOTO COURTESY OF the anchorage, but we were still buf eted by the northerly winds.

SHUTTERSTOCK

Cruisers chase the sun down the West Coast

BY SUZY CARMODY

Seeking