After spending a month on the water but not in the water I'm ready to do some diving!
During the first week OverexposedX2 brought his RIB over to Blake Island and met Shane and I for a couple of dives. I also was able to do one dive with a BOC on Stuart Island that I have been wanting to do for some time... a deep wall at turn point on Boundary Passage.
The rest of the time we just relaxed (at anchor most of the time.) Two whole weeks we were anchored at Friday Harbor, taking the Whaler into town several times a day to hang out. There was a raft of fishboats anchored just South of us and evidently a fifty footer from the bunch had sunk three weeks earlier and was fouling the bottom. One boat that tried to anchor between our boat and the flotilla ended up having to hire divers to free their anchor. Nasty job as the sunken boat was burping diesel.
One day we took the Whaler out to watch the Orca Pod on the West side of San Juan Island and found a bunch of them well South of where all the other boats were. We shut off the motor and they turned and started coming straight for us.
Usually we have at least one close call on these trips... some times more. This time was no exception. On the way home we ran into a wall of fog in Thatcher Pass that extended across Rosario Straights. No big deal... happens ever summer... and we were running by radar and GPS/Computer nav software. Except the fog was shallow and the sun was shinning very brightly through it making it hard to see the radar or computer screen. I knew we were in the shipping lane and there was a lot of traffic blips on the radar but I was having a hard time picking which ones to dodge. One particular one kept getting closer on a direct bearing line and no matter how far I turned away it kept coming. It turned out to be on of the mega tugs that escorts oil tankers to the Anacortes Refinery... and by the time I had visual on him we were very close. The problem was I couldn't tell which way he was going since they can go sideways as fast as forward... and I also didn't know if there was a tanker somewhere nearby that I had missed on the radar somehow. Turning even more I was able to miss him and a radio call confirmed he was solo... but by this time I was headed back in the direction from whence I had come. Once we made it across the straights we found a spot to drop anchor and waited for a couple of hours for the fog lifted. Soon we saw the tug on his way back accompanying a huge tanker to the refinery.
Well enough of that... it really wasn't as close a call as the one we had with the container ship in Haro Straight two years ago.
During the first week OverexposedX2 brought his RIB over to Blake Island and met Shane and I for a couple of dives. I also was able to do one dive with a BOC on Stuart Island that I have been wanting to do for some time... a deep wall at turn point on Boundary Passage.
The rest of the time we just relaxed (at anchor most of the time.) Two whole weeks we were anchored at Friday Harbor, taking the Whaler into town several times a day to hang out. There was a raft of fishboats anchored just South of us and evidently a fifty footer from the bunch had sunk three weeks earlier and was fouling the bottom. One boat that tried to anchor between our boat and the flotilla ended up having to hire divers to free their anchor. Nasty job as the sunken boat was burping diesel.
One day we took the Whaler out to watch the Orca Pod on the West side of San Juan Island and found a bunch of them well South of where all the other boats were. We shut off the motor and they turned and started coming straight for us.
Usually we have at least one close call on these trips... some times more. This time was no exception. On the way home we ran into a wall of fog in Thatcher Pass that extended across Rosario Straights. No big deal... happens ever summer... and we were running by radar and GPS/Computer nav software. Except the fog was shallow and the sun was shinning very brightly through it making it hard to see the radar or computer screen. I knew we were in the shipping lane and there was a lot of traffic blips on the radar but I was having a hard time picking which ones to dodge. One particular one kept getting closer on a direct bearing line and no matter how far I turned away it kept coming. It turned out to be on of the mega tugs that escorts oil tankers to the Anacortes Refinery... and by the time I had visual on him we were very close. The problem was I couldn't tell which way he was going since they can go sideways as fast as forward... and I also didn't know if there was a tanker somewhere nearby that I had missed on the radar somehow. Turning even more I was able to miss him and a radio call confirmed he was solo... but by this time I was headed back in the direction from whence I had come. Once we made it across the straights we found a spot to drop anchor and waited for a couple of hours for the fog lifted. Soon we saw the tug on his way back accompanying a huge tanker to the refinery.
Well enough of that... it really wasn't as close a call as the one we had with the container ship in Haro Straight two years ago.
