Day 28 - Port Angeles

Today, 3 Sept 2009, we made the 20-mile crossing from Victoria, BC to Port Angeles, WA. We got superb help from two boats behind us. We used ropes to man handle Pachuca back around the boat immediately behind us into the corner freed up by a yacht that had left earlier and swing her bow toward the exit and into the gentle wind, with the help of Mike pulling the bow over from his boat.

It was another day of insignificant wind and calm water all of the way across the Strait of Juan de Fuca. On the way I lowered the Canada courtesy flag and replaced it with the Stars 'n Stripes and then hoisted the Q quarantine flag on the starboard side. We crossed the border into the USA at 3 PM and at 5 PM rounded the breakwater and entered the Port Angeles Harbor and soon dropped anchor in less than 9 meters of water 500 meters from the town dinghy docking area.

I contacted the US Coast guard on VHF 16 and they gave me the telephone number of Customs, which I would see the following day.

Now that I was back in the USA I could put away the C-Map chart plotting software running on my Acer computer and revert to the Raymarine C120 chart plotter. C-Map had performed very well and proved to be extremely accurate, showing the subtle differences of position of Pachuca before and after she was rafted up in Victoria. However, it was good to be back with the C120 because it has a larger screen and is more reliable because it doesn't experience the occasional loss of GPS position data that the Acer experienced (necessitating the stopping of C-Map, restarting the GPS, then restarting C-Map).

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