By the time we’d recovered enough in the morning, Andante and Abby Normal were already motoring around Ediz Hook and heading west for Neah Bay along with an impromptu Ho, Friday, they’d picked up along the way. We gathered our wits while we threw quick breakfasts down our throats and followed them an hour or so later for the 50-some-odd mile course. With an earlier start than the previous day, we had less of a buck out the Straits and it was easier to keep track of the passing ships coming from and heading out into the wide Pacific.

Neah Bay, the final jumping off point just inside Cape Flattery, came into view with plenty of daylight left. We radioed ahead for the inside skinny on the fuel dock hours and found their their services still within reach when we arrived. After topping off our tanks, we anchored in between Andante and Abby Normal with Friday not far away. Jim Shutt, another Ho, had parked his lovely Apropos in the marina to fiddle some minor repairs. Robert pulled together some left overs for quick, but good, hot meal.

At one point that afternoon we’d tried to push Mabrouka a little harder against the rising chop and she’d objected by waving her tachometer needle around erratically at us and stuttering with her engine. That meant a dirty fuel filter, so I changed it out after everyone had eaten. That I didn’t do a thorough job of bleeding the air out of the system afterwards would prove to be a demi-fateful issue the next morning.

Clueless about the little bubbles lurking in the fuel lines, I managed a sundowner and everyone crawled into bed, prepping for an early start in the morning. Our cruising companions on Andante and Abby Normal are better equipped than Mabrouka for gathering weather intelligence and we intended to follow their lead with a 7 AM departure.