July 15th

We got up early to catch the tide and headed out of Victoria harbor avoiding all the little fishing boats at the entrance. Then we headed across a calm Strait of Juan de Fuca towards Port Angeles. While Jim steered, I made banana bread with the last of our bananas. I made Jim eat up the peaches as I didn’t want the customs official confiscating our lovely peaches.

I called the customs and immigration number ahead of time and gave them our details and I was instructed to call them as soon as we arrived. She warned me that the ferry The Coho was due to arrive at Port Angeles at noon and the agents would be busy processing the arrivals. So we throttled up a bit and made it to the check in dock at 11:50. I called the customs number again to ask for an agent to come and process our boat. The agent arrived and was so pleasant. He handed us our clearance number and left, no questions about importing fruit or alcohol and no inspection of our boat. There are only a few areas that we can clear customs into the US, Roche Harbor and Friday Harbor in the San Juan Islands, Point Roberts and Bellingham. It would have been much more convenient to clear customs at Port Townsend which is at the opening into the Puget Sound but there isn’t a customs office there. A friend of ours landed at Port Townsend accidentally and they had to wait 3 hours for the agent to drive from Port Angeles and I don’t think he was very happy.

After clearing customs, we untied and pushed off the dock and headed out of Port Angeles for Admiralty Inlet. We were going to catch the incoming tide into the Puget Sound and were hoping to reach Port Ludlow by early evening. It got lovely and sunny so we had melted cheese sandwiches in the cockpit. Then I helped Jim polish the brass pedestal which holds the wheel. It was so shiny!

Seagulls enjoying the sunshine and calm weather

Dungeness Spit lighthouse in the sunshine

We sunned ourselves and had a lovely ride down the Admiralty Inlet. With the current we were traveling at 10-11 knots GPS speed! We passed Port Townsend and then some dark clouds appeared and it started to rain! Jim covered the gleaming pedestal in glad wrap to protect our work. Then he soaped up the boat and the rain washed it clean!

Jim scrubbing the decks

We made good time to Port Ludlow so decided to continue on to Kingston, which is not far from Seattle. I cooked up the last of the salmon and steak and we had that with the tomato salad leftovers. It made a lovely meal, although Jacintha refused to eat the salmon, opting for meat!

Dinner!

We arrived at Kingston at 8 pm. There were a lot of boats anchored outside Kingston harbor as it was a busy Friday night. So we dropped anchor there as well.