Chilly Hope Island

The lines were loosed on Saturday after lunch and tied again on Sunday about the same time, and somehow those 24 hours were once again far longer than seems possible. Had a nice sail for a while up Budd Inlet and an easy night at Hope. It's a beautiful full moon now and there were cloud breaks enough to see it on the water transcendent magical. The current really pumps along that south side of Hope Island and the only problem is that the current will hold your boat in line with it and perhaps beam to the prevailing winds and waves. Not too much fetch, but enoough it would be unpleasant in winds 20+. The island is deserted of other humans and so the wilds were fairly wild. There is an enormous amount of debris down on the trails, such that if you aren't familiar with the basic course of the trails you could easily miss them. Those rangers, if they even do it, have some work to do later this spring.

Lovely sail up Budd Inlet

Winds came up a bit overnight and one of my complaints with the NWS is that the forecast area is way too large for Puget Sound. The Puget Sound and Hood Canal forecast area goes from all the way up in Everett all the way down to Olympia, and that's ridiculous. Even the large scale systems effect these places at different times and strengths. I've generally found that whatever the forecast says for Puget Sound, it might do that for Seattle, but will be much less around Olympia. Except when it's not. We had 10-15 on the nose coming home in Budd Inlet. No problem. A wonderful get away. Once again, Aeolus is our space ship and was problem free and lovely.