I started to say I'd had an "uneventful" day, but have decided I need to add some descriptors to my sail blogging lexicon. Today wasn't uneventful, it was just normal, ...at least as normal as vagrancy on Puget Sound can be. There was no particular excitement, either positive (i.e. Orca sighting) or negative (i.e. impaling Mabrouka on a rock), but it was a good day, ...an enjoyable day.
The morning started out as I like it to, ...lazily. I made myself a latte and began fiddling about with various things on the boat while waiting for the tide to come in. As you may recall from previous posts from Port Ludlow, there's a shallow bar at the entrance to my little anchorage, so Mabrouka's trapped in here until there's enough depth to make an escape.
Our destination today was Port Gamble, just about 5 miles south up the Hood Canal. The wind was at our backs and variable from just about zero to up around ten, so our speed varied from just about zero to just over six knots. Of course, the best sailing came right about time to take down the sails for the entrance.
It's after four now, so I'll put off shoreside explorations until tomorrow and then pass judgement on whether this was a worthwhile stop or not. With my recent foray into searching out the historical significance of my landfalls (see the entry about Port Blakely), I chose Port Gamble for what I understand to be a nicely preserved saw mill town dating back 160 years. Established by Andrew Pope and William Talbot in 1853, they were in direct competition with William Stanton at Port Blakely.
Without even having gone ashore, I suspect now why I've never heard of Port Gamble as a sailing destination from any of my boating buddies. There are virtually NO shoreside facilities and apparently the only place to even land a dinghy is complements of the local kayak rental company on their beach.
BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY: Get together with the Port Gamble chamber of commerce and build a small dock with a few slips and a little store. The anchorage seems fairly well protected and I'll bet lots of yachties would come here to explore the historic buildings.