September 30^th, 2015 Wednesday- Leaving Neah Bay heading toward Grays Harbor

Looking east out of Neah Bay's Makah Marina Seal Rocks remind of the Sea Lions sunning at the docks.

We left Neah Bay around 4:30 PM with much indecisiveness about whether we should leave or stay another night.  With rougher weather report for Friday, we had about 36 hrs of motoring ahead of us targeting Astoria.  This leg was to be the BIG COMMITMENT, thus the back and forth and a lot of discussions about navigational plans and weather forecasts.   During most of the waking hours we decided to do 2 hour shifts and during the night we resorted to 3 hour shifts so that we can at least get 2 hours of sleep assuming about an hour of getting to sleep.  Jeff valiantly started the shift at 6pm while Anna steered around the buoy marking Cape Flattery. 

Cape Flattery in the background while Anna steers around it and into Pacific Ocean with leather driving gloves. 

Through the night, we kept about 15 nautical mile (nm) away from the coast.  While on my shift I reminisced our first boat’s, Wandering Star, auto-pilot.  It had a slight drift but at least we didn’t have adjust constantly at the helm.  On Luminesce we have a hydrovane designed to keep course while under sail which serves as the auto-pilot when we are not motoring.  Once we shutoff the engine and under sail, we will be testing out the hydrovane performance.  

The red piece is a part of the hydrovane.