Standing on the dock in Tacoma I felt the temperature drop considerably around 5pm, our scheduled time of departure. With it came the north wind. I paid it little mind thinking this was merely the erratic gusts that often come with the transition of day into night and would die after nightfall. I was more concerned about tides, thinking these would be tonight’s nemesis.
Around 1 am we discovered that would not be the case. Adam and I passed the oars off to Rick and Greg at the top of Colvos Passage (14 miles north of Tacoma). By then a headwind had built from white caps to significant 3 to 4 foot waves slamming dead on into our bow.
Two hours later they were only just south of Bainbridge and averaging a speed below a knot. Passing the oars back to us they laughed deliriously, describing the experience as “doing dead lifts for two hours” and complaining loudly about the “lights on shore that wouldn’t move.” In spite of this Rick was thrilled that he seasick meds worked. Everybody was happy about that.
An hour later slow progress had been made but waves were now a consistent four feet with several passing at least six feet from trough to crest. These were by far the biggest I had seen in this part of the sound. With such small periods between the resulting crash of the bow arrested any momentum we built. Combined with the 15 to 20 knot direct head wind persistently threatening to wrench our bow around and put our beam to the waves it was a wonder we could make any headway at all. But it was still not fast enough in the time we had allotted ourselves. Their were events planned in Victoria – starting at 10am on Sunday – four to five interviews, a meet and greet at the boat, a cocktail party and a middle school presentation on Monday.
Two options were viable. Either we take the whole weekend to row to Victoria and miss the events that Adam had taken weeks to plan, or turn around, trailer the boat and appear like we had promised. None of us are of the disposition to want to turn back, even if all the progress we were making was half knot. That would still be 12 miles in 24 hours and no doubt the weather would change. With enough time much is possible, with limited time we had to choose wisely. We are 14 months ahead of the Mid-Atlantic race and Rick and Adam already have more experience in the ocean boat than Greg, Dylan, Brad and myself had six months before the 2006 North Atlantic race. What was and continues to be most important at this juncture of our project is making sure people know about OAR Northwest. It was not the easy choice, but we suspected it was the right choice and after a brief mid-sound exchange with curious tugboat that loomed and sank with each passing wave we turned our bow south, the oars seemingly now feather light, back down to Tacoma.