OPENING DAY -- PRELUDE

On Tuesday, immediately after arriving home I got the boat ready for the locks.  The plan was for Andy and myself to single hand our boats through the locks and get to "dock zero" at the club where we were going to spend the balance of the week.  

The challenge with the locks is that 19 out of 20 times you get the small locks but need to always prepare for the big locks. With their floating sidewalls, the small locks take very little preparation - normal mooring lines will do and it's relatively easy.  

The large locks, on the other hand, require 50 foot lines and because  I was single handing, I had rig 4 50 foot lines, 2 at the bow, 2 on the stern.  Knowing full well I had a 95% chance of not using them.

We locked through without incident.  The lock folks are pretty good at what they do and as it turned out there were 3 boats, all 40' or greater, all with only one person on board. Up we went and into the lake.

The ship canal is fun.  Industrial in some places, park like and near canal like in others, it's an interesting strip of water that punches from the sound into Lake Union.  My commute takes me on a bike trail right along the canal and it fun seeing it from the water side once in a while.

We had opened the Burlington Northern bridge just before the locks, but then had to pause and toot for the Ballard, Fremont, and finally University bridges each having to open to let Andy and I through.  

'Zero dock' would become quite busy later in the week, but on this Tuesday it was open with only a couple of boats on the dock.  The dock itself is a temporary dock with sections for different yacht clubs. Royal Vancouver Yacht club, Royal Victoria Yacht Club, Tacoma, Rainier, Gig Harbor, and more are all grouped together -- making for several parties.

Fast forward to Saturday.  The week here has been fun, but the big events are about to begin.  Crew races and the parade.  

Last night was quite a party on the dock as everyone gets ready for the parade.  The Canadian yacht clubs showed quite a bit of tradition, the decorations on the Tacoma Yacht Club boats were superb and the Singles Yacht Club showed they had incredible stamina partying well into the evening.

We'll cover the day's events in the next blog entry - the band width is pretty low at the club so it may have to wait until we get  back to Shilshole...