A Couple More Hours (Tues. 5/23/23)
It’s HAPPENING! We are on our way to Anacortes, WA with our sailboat in tow, with the goal in sight to reach Glacier Bay, AK. The Inside Passage has been a dream in the back of Weston’s mind for the better part of the last decade, and more recently a dream of mine. The dream has evolved some over the last few years, with the original plan to kayak changing to sailing when we bought our current boat a year and a half ago. Weston has been working on boat projects (I helped a little) all winter, transforming our normally lake racing keelboat into a fully functioning live aboard with all the bells and whistles. And by bells and whistles I especially mean plumbing and electrical. It’s quite nice to have running water, lights, solar, and charging capabilities on a 23 foot boat. Weston built a hard dodger and a solar arch, we’ve upgraded our winches, installed an anchor bow roller, built a little kitchen cabinet with a gimbled Origo stove, and many more upgrades. Almost all of our projects are completed, with a few more to finish up once she gets in the water in Anacortes. Besides some additional provisions to come, have everything we need for three months loaded up in the boat. We’ve planned our basic route through the Inside Passage to take us to Glacier Bay National Park. We are on the road and we’re as ready as we will ever be!
The last couple of weeks have been a monumental effort to finish up house projects, pack, and complete the seemingly endless list of boat projects. Our friends Noah and Stephanie, with their 14 month-old, Aster, arrived a week ago from their year of traveling across the country to different friends and family - they’ll be staying in our house while we’re gone. Having baby Aster around and getting to be Uncle Weston and Auntie Becca was a fun distraction from the stress of packing!
We definitely underestimated the amount of time it would take to get ready to leave. Weston’s last day of work was Friday, my last day of work was Tuesday, and we were hoping to leave Thursday, May 18th. Our families came over a few days to help - shoutout to our parents and siblings! It was truly a team effort! We realized leaving Thursday wasn’t going to happen, then our next goal of leaving Friday had come and gone. Saturday we really thought we were getting closer and we started saying “couple more hours,” “we’re leaving in a couple more hours.” When it got to be almost midnight on Saturday and we realized we were not in fact leaving that day, we again deluded ourselves into thinking we could get up early and leave at 9am the next day because all we needed was ”a couple more hours.” That didn’t happen either. It was like all the hard work we were putting in was progressing along at a snails pace, we were drowning in quicksand, taking one step forward and two steps back. All day Sunday it truly felt like we just needed a couple more hours and we would be loaded up.
FINALLY at midnight, we hit that long awaited threshold. We were ready. At 12:20am on Monday, May 22, we pulled out of our neighborhood towing Meadowlark, bound for Anacortes, Washington. After a bumpy I-76 that required a quick ratchet strap to be put back on in the shoulder, we made it to Cheyenne where neither of us could keep driving. We parked ourselves in the lovely rest area next to the semis, climbed up the trailer, and tucked ourselves into the v-berth of the boat for a long 7 hours of much needed rest! We then set off for 24 hours of nearly straight driving before we hit Anacortes at 10am the following day. To say we were relieved that the truck, boat, and trailer (and ourselves) made it safe is an understatement. The first huge hurdle to starting this adventure has been overcome!
Ready to go in front of our house!
Rest area in Cheyenne, WY - woke up next to Western Meadowlarks singing away!
Meadowlark at the Echo Canyon rest area in Utah.
We finally made it to Anacortes, WA! 1430 miles of driving later!
