Day 16: Arrival

Augus 26, 2010
17:34 HST, which is 8:34pm Pacific Daylight time (03:34 UTC August 27)
Lat: 48 19.7 North
Lon: 123 52.6 West
Distance to go: 22.5 nautical miles

We entered the Strait of Juan de Fuca earlier today and truly are almost there!  Before getting to Cape Flattery, we realized that something was wrong, either the engine was having issues or more likely the prop was having issues. I noticed that we weren't even coming close to the speed we should be doing given the RPM's when I turned on the engine. So, I ran the throttle at medium to see what RPM's we were making. The engine wouldn't even turn at 2000 RPM's much less the 3200 it should have at max throttle. Suspecting a problem with the prop, I taped our underwater camera to the boat hook, turned on the movie function and took a video of the prop. Hopefully we can add this video to the blog at some point. Anyway it showed clearly that a net had snared itself to the prop. We limped into Neah Bay where courageous Dave got in the water and removed the net from the prop. I took a video of this as well. Ever since then, we have been motor sailing making good time. The tide is now ebbing and will likely be in our face pretty much the rest of the way. This means when we reach Race Rocks (just outside of Victoria Harbor) there will be significant current against us which will make for slow going. We should arrive in Victoria before the end of the day though! We are all excited to be here. It has been a relatively easy trip so far, lets keep it that way (touch wood).

Brad