Neah Bay

Well folks, it has been a day or two (okay 10) since I last posted, but we have not had any access to internet. Let me tell you how it has been going.....

We have not had great weather and were held over in Neah Bay for three days. The winds were all SE and 25 plus knots with swells as high as our house. Well maybe not that high, but too nasty for our team!! Blake ventured into Port Angeles by bus to purchase some parts for the running lights and some charts we were missing. Nothing too important, just the whole west coast of Washington!! We were sure we had them on board, but we discovered we just had Oregon, California, and Mexico.

Neah Bay is a small Native Reservation on the northwest corner of continental U.S. A. We were there long enough to be invited to weddings, Xmas, whale hunting expeditions (just kidding) and baby showers. All good fun though, and we had a good time. The local store sells everything a person would need, and the groceries were not too expensive. We sussed out the best wood fired pizza(actually there was only one, ) and the best latte (alright, only one of those too!!)

We left Neah Bay with a small window of weather to get us down to La Push, the next village down the coast. It is even smaller than Neah Bay, but we hoped to overnight there, and leave from La Push and head to Gray's Harbour near Aberdeen, Washington the next day. The winds are still SE but only blowing 5 - 15 knots with a 4-6 foot westerly swell.

Well.....

It turned out that the winds were more like 15 - 20 and the swells were 8 -10 feet. Which isn't so bad if the wind is blowing in the right direction. Or if we wanted to go to Japan. Which is starting to look like a good idea considering the wind direction. Both Kim and I became sea sick with all the rolling and if either of us went below we were toast!!. Anyhow, we went about 30 miles off shore and it was better, but the damage was done. Shouldn't had cheeseburgers for breakfast!! Actually, we didn't, but Blake did and he was pretty smug with his "I feel great, wish I had eaten two!" Grrr..

We landed La Push at about 6:30, were boarded by the Coast Guard to check our paperwork, our life jackets, our gun supply (don't reach for them, just point to them) and our head. Yep, that all they needed to see because we are a Canadian vessel, and that is all the Coast Guard checks. "What ya totin, son?" and does that toilet flush?

Once all that was done, we went ashore to check this little town we had stumbled upon. (Easy everyone, we planned it, there was no stumbling) The "Riverside Cafe" was open and we had some dinner. Funny thing about sea sickness, as soon your brain stops rolling around like the compass on the binnacle, you feel okay and then you are hungry. Very odd indeed.

Turned out that La Push was our home for the next three days as well due to rougher seas and those nasty SE winds that seem determined to have us all buying real estate and settling down for the winter.