Another perfect day in paradise…

And dang, but that’s a lot of C-Brats!

I finally met BitterEnd’s Captain Richard Rodriguez in person. More later!

We took a cruise up to Port Townsend last weekend, and it was decided that my younger daughter and I would stay out at Fort Worden State Park, tied up to one of the mooring buoys. These mooring buoys have a reputation for being less than comfortable due to their exposed location just inside Point Wilson.  See, Point Wilson is one of the pinch-points of the Admiralty Inlet bottleneck that all shipping traffic to or from Seattle, Tacoma, and Olympia must negotiate, so you can get some nasty vessel wakes through here. Plus the weather and tide can kick up the water something fierce, in addition to whatever residual swell is coming in off the Pacific and down the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

But the weather report was favorable, and there was a big fishing derby going on, which was going to make the wharf near the boat ramp a madhouse at about sunrise, so we decided to tie up to a mooring buoy and stay out of the way. Specifically, we decided to tie up to the buoy farthest from the wharf.

We made up to the mooring buoy just fine at about 21:30 Saturday evening. Low tide, a -1.1, had been at 18:15. This is important, because at 02:30 Sunday morning, when I awoke to take a look around, the mooring buoy was gone!

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Although in many parts of the northern hemisphere it’s what we call the “off-season”, now’s a good time to renew whatever annual moorage passes or permits you normally pay for. You never know…you might end up staying overnight at one of these facilities this winter or early spring, and without your permit you’ll have to pay full price!

For me, this means it’s time to renew my Washington State Parks Annual Moorage Permit. At $3.50 per foot per year, the break-even point is just seven nights tied up to a float at any Washington State Park.

Will I stay a minimum of seven nights? (more…)