Tuesday Sept 3, 2013 Astoria, Oregon

We made it to the border of Washington and Oregon and are now in Astoria. More on that in a moment.

The last entry we made was while we were in Neah Bay waiting out a few rainy, stormy days, hanging out at anchor and getting to know other cruisers heading south.  Gusts of wind swept through the anchorage off and on each day but we felt safe and secure on Falcon.  Last Thursday seven of us headed to shore in our dinghies and splashed through puddles en route to the Makah Museum and Cultural Centre. The Museum contained an extremely rare collection of little seen aboriginal artifacts which had been preserved in thick mud for five centuries from the oceanside village of Ozette, 15 miles south of Neah Bay. The village was wiped out in the mud slide. In the early 70’s the ocean started eroding the mud, revealing more and more of the culture, carefully revealed with the use of pumps and salt water.  The museum is home of these artifacts, fantastic natural history exhibits, replicas of dugout canoes, woven baskets, tools, and a replica of a long house.  Later that day we visited a Dutch couple who had been cruising around the world for 13 years but we had to cut our visit short as we were due for appies on Tregoning.  Such a busy social calendar!

The weather improved greatly by Friday afternoon.  We readied Falcon – put the dinghy on the foredeck, outboard on its bracket, ensured everything was stowed properly and headed to bed early.  We pulled up anchor before dawn last Saturday and cleared the breakwater at Neah Bay, as the sun came up, heading for Cape Flattery and the wide open ocean.   We motored for hours before the wind grew enough to put sails up and then we had a fantastic afternoon and evening cruising southwest.  We were over 30 miles out at sea when we had our first flying hitch hiker, a beautiful little yellow breasted bird that circled us a few times and finally perched on our life ring for a few seconds.  Later we crossed paths with a large pod of gray sided dolphins but they were clearly on a mission and not interested in playing.



As dusk arrived we were settling into our routine of 3.5 hour watches for each of us. That gave the ‘off watch’ time to rest and get a little sleep.  Unfortunately our routine was soon thrown off when the autopilot started acting up.  We disengaged it and began hand steering through the night when we dropped the sails and started motoring.  An orange crescent moon rose slowly in the sky to the east as we made our way south, using both our chart plotter and the stars to steer by.  The stars were spectacular and the Milky Way so clearly visible it felt like I could touch it. I spotted two streaking lights underwater beside the boat – two dolphins checking us out!  Towards dawn the southeast wind picked up considerably making conditions somewhat uncomfortable until we raised the sails, steadying the boat immediately.  We soon realized that we did not want to spend three more days slamming into the 25 knot headwinds.  We tacked onto starboard and headed for the Columbia River and Astoria .

The Columbia River Bar in a very peaceful state

We had to sail around 70 miles back towards the Washington coastline and I must admit that I was happy to see the distant rolling hills appear.  By late afternoon we were approaching the Columbia River Bar, a stretch of water that demands respect and extremely precise navigation, often under treacherous conditions. Because of the extreme conditions (mostly in winter) of the Columbia River Bar it is used by the US Coast Guard as a training ground for life saving exercises.  We knew this and were both feeling nervous as we approached the first of many aids to navigation.  The Columbia River, over 900 miles long, leads to Portland and is used as a major import and export route  for freighters with as many as 4,000 crossing the bar yearly.
Our passage of the bar was fairly benign, just a little rolly but not bad as we motored past three huge freighters, a tug and barge, numerous sports fishermen and a very fast US Coast Guard cutter before making our way into the marina at Astoria, 10 miles inside the bar.

So we took Monday ‘off’ to rest and recover from our 38 hour passage and spent today taking in some of the local sights.  We hopped on the great little 100 year old tourist trolley,

its whistle blowing as it made its way through the old town and along the active waterfront.  We spent the afternoon exploring town, the very informative Maritime Museum and touring the “Columbia”, a retired light house ship that was anchored off the Columbia River Bar from 1950 - 1979.  We’ve enjoyed Astoria and want to come back this way by land sometime to explore the length of the Columbia River.  Our next three days will be spent working on the never ending list of projects including trying to fix the autopilot and setting up our wind vane steering system so that, hopefully, we can avoid having to hand steer to our next port. 

This display shows actual conditions the Coast Guard face at the Columbia Bar in winter. 

By Saturday morning we expect to be pushing off again heading south along the Oregon Coast.  Depending on conditions we’ll either stop in at Newport or Coos Bay.