Fetch; Humboldt Bay and the ocean

Monday May 14.

After a night in a rather sketchy RV Park I checked for wind. There was a nice mild breeze and mostly sunny skies. In the middle of the night I woke up from some movement of the trailer. I carefully opened the blinds and didn’t see anything wrong. Thoughts raced through my mind; some guy could be messing with my outboard motor and I wouldn’t see it from here.  Finally I saw the culprit; a cat had jumped on the boat! I rocked the van, which made the boat rock as well. The cat looked around confused and took off.

I launched the boat in Eureka and sailed down toward the South Bay. There is a wide channel with industrial places both sides. I noticed a boatyard on the west side with a trawler one the hard.

 

 

 

 

Near the beginning of the breakwater I started wondering whether I should poke my head out in the ocean. The wind was less than 10 knots at this point and I’ve wanted to do this the past weeks, but the sea has been too wild. Since it was straight into the wind, I lowered sail and motored over there (I think it’s called; across the bar).

 

 

 

 

Once in the open, I raised sail and sailed…. till the wind died. Swell was gliding underneath Fetch, having come a long distance and about ready to crash on the beach about a mile away. In celebration of Fetch’s first time on the ocean I made a Nutella sandwich and put it on extra thick!

 

 

A big ship was heading in and looked like it was aiming at me for a while. After it turned into the entrance I saw it was the dredge and it went right to work dredging the channel. It didn’t take long before it was loaded to it’s waterline, after which it headed back out to dump the stuff. I motored back past him to see if I could find some wind inside.

 

 

Inside I found a nice breeze which took me right back to Eugene. I swung by Tony, in the marina, to say high and to show him Fetch. He was quite pleased and asked me to come by before I left town.

There are three channels, each with a bridge, into Arcata Bay direct north of Eugene. The southern one ends up in a slough with a fixed low bridge, so I turned around before I got stuck. I then went to the biggest channel to the north and it forks of into different arms. On the cart and GPS one can distinguish different channels on the bay, but from the boat it just looks like a vast area with some dry spots here and there and lots of stakes without apparent relation to the shallow areas. It’s really hard to guess distances. With aid of the GPS however, I was able to find and follow one arm and after a bit cross over to another one to then head back through the third and middle channel.

 

 

 

 

This channel took me by a substantial Egret rookery. There may have been 50 of them. It was a beautiful sight to see all these Egrets fly hither and dither. They are such graceful birds. I noticed some Great Blue Herons and a Night Heron as well. There were some nice settlements on that island. I wouldn’t mind living in such a place one day. Slowly the fog had been creeping in and by the time I reached the dock it was pretty foggy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I didn’t haul Fetch out, because I was planning to sail some more the next day. After another great meal at the Lost Coast Brewery I parked the van on some parking lot for the night, hoping I wouldn’t get bothered.