Miles traveled, day 4: 135
Miles traveled total: 550
Miles to Port Angeles: 3,987
When I downloaded the North Pacific weatherfax this morning I noticed that exactly where our boat was they had placed a label. Instead of saying “Yohelah is here”, it said “GALE”. And it was a good one. We’re through the worst of it now, having been hove to for the last 4 hours or so. When the sustained winds were over 40 it was time to turn up, park the boat in a hove to position, and come downstairs. Right around 1:00 when I was getting ready to check in on the ham net we took an enormous wave over the bow, and suddenly where the dinghy had been there was now light coming through the forward hatch. The wave had snapped the lines that hold the bow of the dink, but luckily Rob had tied extra lines and it was still attached at the back. Our forward stanchion that had been trashed last year in Bora Bora when the speedboat parked on our bow is once again bent, this time out, at about a 70 degree angle.
The dink is tied back down with much heavier lines, but the inside of the boat is completely trashed. There is water everywhere. Every time we take a huge wave it finds its way in. The worst feeling is when we become weightless momentarily, not knowing how far down we’re going to go and how hard we’re going to hit bottom. We keep thinking it’s slowing down, and then we look up and it’s still in the mid 30’s. Guess we’ll be here for a while.
Cherish every moment, huh? Yeah, not so much. What I do know that I will learn on the first try, is that when Yohelah leaves the Pacific Northwest next time there will be a little envelope stashed in the chart table with enough money in it to put her on a freighter and ship her back home.
Teresa
