Our start to sailing south sure had an unusual beginning. Instead of making our way down to California at the end of the summer with many of the other cruisers, we found ourselves delaying our travels to seize a work opportunity which would take us 100 miles off the Washington coast.
After turning out the Straits of Juan De Fuca, we continued to trek further west, where the seas get bigger and the water turns a particular shade of deep, deep blue. On our deck, we had six oceanographic instruments strapped to our lifelines, a sight which earned us a second look from other boaters we passed.
As our friends and family know, Chris is an oceanographic engineer by trade and works on scientific moorings throughout the Puget Sound, down the U.S West Coast, and as far as Greenland. It was a natural fit to merge science with sailing along our route! We partnered with a research program at the lab where Chris has worked the past several years and arranged to both deploy and recover oceanographic floats. These floats drift with the currents and are programmed to dive down into the depths and back to the surface, all while taking a suite of measurements such as salinity, temperature, and pressure.
We sailed for 24-hours straight to reach the first deployment site 100 miles offshore, dodging fishing boats and admiring the stars during our night watches. At first light, we prepared the floats to go overboard, using our satellite communication (IridiumGO!) to communicate with the project team back on shore. For each float, we transited to a GPS position, initiated the program commands for the instrument, and turned downwind and down-wave for easy deployment off the stern.
With all floats successful deployed over the course of a day, we turned our bow back towards land and began the journey to Westport, Washington where we would spend the next few weeks before returning out to sea to recover the instruments.
Our deck was clear of floats for the time being, and we took the opportunity to cast a line back behind us and try our hand at catching a fish. Sure enough, we soon had an albacore tuna on the hook, which put up one hell of a fight! We capped off our productive day with fresh sushi and geared up for one more night sail as we made our way back to familiar shores.
A huge thanks to our great friend, David Miller, who helped us with night watch shifts and with pulling up a big ‘ole fish.