August 7 - 9, 2012: Wow, what a nice day in the neighborhood! The sea and wind conditions were uncommonly flat and benign. You would think we were cruising around Puget Sound. It was actually warm enough to go without coats and we had partly sunny skies with high cloud ceiling so we had a view of the coastline. We were both floored that the weather report was accurate and that we had a favorable one knot current too. With those kinds of conditions we skipped Gray's Harbor and continued north to Neah Bay arriving Wednesday night about 9:30 pm.

The view of Tatoosh Island was striking and made the rounding of Cape Flattery that much more appealing and a rewarding end to a long trip. We both sighed a big relief ... me, I could have cried I was so happy to be home.

It took us 35.5 hours to travel 243 nautical miles and our average speed was 6.85 knots. Not bad considering we worried about this last leg of the journey. We had visions of bashing into head winds and large swells. The key to our successful northbound travel was having no schedule to meet and only travelling with winds less than 10 knots. Yeah, we had to motorsail the entire way but it sure beats getting our butts kicked.

So far we have travelled 1,212 nm up the west coast from San Diego. We will add another couple hundred more by the time we reach Seattle after fooling around in the San Juan Islands for a month or so. Personally, I am tired of moving and want to hunker in for awhile.

Bob & I are both glad to have this portion of our journey behind us. As to the future, well that is yet to be determined. Thank you all for sharing in our sailing adventure and your words of encouragement. More blogs will follow but for now I am closing the book on this portion of our journeys.

Neah Bay 48° 22.520N 124° 36.477W