In September, the nights are cool, the kids? go back to school, and thousands of wooden boat nuts converge on Port Townsend for the Wooden Boat Festival.

The Festival runs for three days, Friday to Sunday, but I have to earn a living, so it was already Friday morning when Wayward Lass left Victoria, carrying her own complement of boat nuts to the show. These being the usual, my dad and myself. The current tables indicated that a 10:00 am start would make best use of the tide, so we didn?t have to rush. I?d launched the night before to avoid any low tide problems at the ramp, leaving the boat overnight at the Oak Bay Marina. The shortest route from Victoria to Port Townsend is a straight line from Gonzales Point in Victoria to Point Wilson, two miles north of Port Townsend, and the marina is less than a mile from Gonzales. From point to point the distance is 26.7 (nautical) miles, from dock to dock we covered a bit over 30 miles.

We pushed off at five past ten, and motored out to Gonzales, where we put up the sails. There wasn?t much wind, but enough to keep the sails filled with the motor still running. As we got out into the strait proper, the wind improved, but still wasn?t enough to get us to Port Townsend by 6:00 pm, so we motor-sailed for the whole crossing. At 1:05, after three hours, we were some two miles past the mid-point, enjoying a warm sunny day. The wind, although it went up and down, stayed in the west so we had it on our starboard quarter the whole time.

At intervals we would sail through very definite ?eddy-lines? between different tidal currents. Often these brought different water conditions, and we?d move from whitecaps to no whitecaps or vice versa as we crossed the lines. The boost we were getting from the tide also varied, and our speed, measured by GPS, could rise or drop by over a knot at these lines.

The current was fastest near Vancouver Island, where it runs strongly around the corner into Georgia Strait, and again near Point Wilson, where it funnels into Puget Sound. As we approached Point Wilson, we were travelling at 11 knots over the ground, about twice what we would expect without the current. At Point Wilson we also had the best wind of the day, so we shut off the motor for the remainder of the trip. We sailed down to and around Point Hudson, where the boat show is held, and through a forest of boats anchored off the town. We were approaching the ferry dock, wondering when the ferry was going to leave, when it let loose a long blast on the horn. We made a fast gybe to get out of its way, and turned in a large circle that let us pass well behind the departing ferry.

Soon after, we stopped to take down the sails, then discovered that Honda didn?t want to start. This was a shock, as he?s generally totally reliable. However, after some drifting around, and some pointless fiddling around, Honda woke up again, and we docked at the Boat Haven at 3:50 for a total time of 5 hours and 45 minutes, a new record for Wayward Lass. (The motor problem did not happen again ? I don?t know what it was, although Alan Woodbury suggests we attribute it to a vapour lock caused by pumping cold gas into a still-warm motor. Sounds good to me!)

We had help at the dock, Jerome MacIlvanie was there to take our lines. Jerome had his lapstrake Chebacco at the show again, and happened to be at the Haven as we came in.

Chuck Leinweber of Duckworksmagazine (www.duckworksmagazine.com) was also there on the dock, and we all introduced ourselves to each other. Then I trotted off to call Customs and check into the country, and then I checked us into the Haven. We were assigned a mooring on the ?linear dock?, a long (very long) dock that snakes out from the far end of the Boat Haven and back along just inside the breakwater. Chuck motored over there with us and helped us carry our gear back to the Harborside Inn, right beside the Haven. After we got settled in, Dad and I went across the road to Sea J?s Café for dinner, then back to the hotel for the rest of the evening.

Saturday morning, we were up and caught the first shuttle bus to the boat show, arriving just before nine. Once in, we lost ourselves in looking at the boats on display, in the water and out. I?m amazed at the time and effort people must put in to bring their boat to such a peak, and to keep it there. I try to look after Wayward Lass, but even so, the lines are getting more grey than white, the floorboard finish is wearing, and tiny scratches are appearing in the cockpit paint (that?s what landing on sandy beaches does!). Never mind the more obvious dings, from ramming docks or other boats! Anyway, I saw a lot of great boats on show, all of which I want to build right away. Right.

I want to say thanks to John Harris and his CLC crew for their unfailing courtesy and interest. We not only used their site as a meeting place again, but John relayed messages back and forth, helping everyone find everyone else! Thanks again, John. (And I really like your new Skerry design.)

Other web and/or Chebacco correspondents we saw this year, besides Jerome and Chuck, were Alan Woodbury, and his father-in-law Roger, James McMullen, John Welsford of New Zealand and Dave Lacombe. John is a designer with a wide portfolio for amateur builders. He is better known in New Zealand and Australia, but that is changing ? you can see (and buy) some of his work at Chuck?s website. As in past years, meeting and talking to other builders and sailors was the best part of the weekend.

Alan, Roger and James came out for a sail on Wayward Lass. Once again I was able to sit back and enjoy the sail, while others did all the work. (Something happened when I scanned this picture ? this is a mirror image, the boom should be on the other side!)

James is planning his own Chebacco, a lapstrake one with a whole slew of custom touches ? I?m looking forward to seeing it finished.

Some of us got out for a sail, hoping to see the schooner race from close-up again. We didn?t get a lot of wind, but enjoyed ourselves anyway. Jerome was also out, with Archie Conn, who visited Vancouver Island last spring for a sail in Wayward Lass ? he was thinking for a while about building his own Chebacco, (but he?s still searching for the perfect design), and we motored/drifted in company for a while. After it was obvious that the schooner race was a non-starter, we fired up the motor and idled around, looking at boats that caught our eye. Between Alan and James, we could identify most boats in sight, and an astonishing number of the people sailing them!

Alan sent me a copy of the Port Townsend & Jefferson County Leader ? that?s us there on the back page! James is sitting on the cabin, and Alan is waving to the rowing boat.

Alan and Roger had a family gathering happening, and James had a ferry to catch, so we said goodbye after our sail. Dad and I went back to the boat show to see what else we could see. We eventually joined John Welsford and Dave Leblanc for a Mexican dinner ? Dave and the waiter helped the rest of us order. To round off the evening, we had a preview of one of John?s new designs, the new Pathfinder plans that will soon be available on the Duckworks site. As I mentioned above, you can buy a number of Welsford designs at Duckworks ? take a look sometime. (This is not a commercial, take it as a public service announcement!)

Dad and I weren?t sure, when we came over, whether we would leave on Sunday or Monday. The tide indicated an early start would be best on either day, leaving no time on the chosen day for boat show or other activity. While we would have liked to stay another day, the wind was very much in our favour on Sunday, and it seemed a shame to waste it. We also thought there was a chance that things would deteriorate on Monday ? we were wrong, but didn?t know that. In any event, at 6:55 am on Sunday we cast off from the Boat Haven dock, and motored out through all the anchored boats. It was overcast but not raining, with a light breeze from the south. Stopping the engine off Point Hudson, we put on the cruiser suits for warmth, which was just as well, because it was chilly out in the strait later, and we had some showers too.

Sailing from Point Hudson, we rounded Point Wilson at 7:30, and with wind and tide, measured speeds up to 9.7 knots. The wind held steady just over our left shoulders, and gradually increased over the next three hours. We had two other sailboats ahead of us, on similar courses, both of them sloops of 30 feet or more. We couldn?t keep up to them, but we came close for quite a while, especially with the nearer.

By 10:30, the wind was over 15 knots, judging by the whitecaps, and Wayward Lass was getting harder to steer. We hove to and took in one reef, which solved the steering problem. By then the effect of the tide was much less, and speeds were around 5 knots, except when we caught a wave and surfed it ? then we would hit the 7 knot range.

I mentioned bands of current earlier, separated by eddylines. We experienced these again, only with the stronger winds, the difference between bands was most obvious by wave size. On several occasions we were overtaken by a series of sizeable waves ? one of these felt as if it had just picked us up and thrown us forward. The GPS jumped from its reading of 4-point-something to 8.5 knots for just a second, then dropped back to where it started ? quite a feeling, that was!

We neared Victoria, on the southeast corner of Vancouver Island, when it was almost time for the tide to change. Around the time of the change, the current atlas shows a lot of smaller, circular eddies, and I think we were caught in one of these for a short time, as our speed over the ground dropped to 1.7 knots, despite the fact that we were still moving well through the water. Luckily we sailed out of this fairly soon, since the wind was dropping, and we were able to pass south of Discovery Island before the now-flooding tide could push us up the eastern side. Once past Discovery, we were almost home and needed to go north for the last mile anyway, so the north-flooding tide wasn?t a problem. With only a breath of wind, we sailed slowly between the breakwaters at Oak Bay, around all the docks and in towards the gas dock, then lost the wind completely as we turned for our final approach. This meant that I didn?t make the tidy landing I wanted, but we did manage to drift in without calling on Honda for a push. Canada Customs take calls from the phone at that dock, so we were able to officially re-enter Canada there.

Our time for the entire trip home was 6 hours and 5 minutes, just twenty minutes more than the trip over took, but this time we did it under sail. This was a first, since we?ve always used the motor on the crossing before, even if we were sailing at the same time. As I?ve said, we could have stayed over another day without weather problems, but we don?t feel badly after that great sail home. Although, come to think of it, Dad had a great sail home, not me ? he had the helm the whole way, I only got to hold it while he put on his boots, poured his coffee, and stuff like that! Still, I had a great passage, so I won?t complain.

See you there again next year!