The afternoon was free, the sun was shining, there was little to no wind, few clouds on the horizon and I had that pull of the sea tugging at me. Let's go I said. .. and 1st Mate said "Sure thing". So off we went today for a spin across the Puget Sound. Stopped at Starbucks and grabbed a couple of their outstanding egg salad sandwiches, and together with my stout Stanley thermos full of piping hot tea, milk and sugar along with some munchy cookies and biscuits/water for the dogs, we set sail.
It was a good ride with just a slight breeze hitting us on our Port bow and just a ripple on the water's surface except for the odd swell produced by crossing ferry boats and the odd cargo ship and tow tugs. Didn't see another pleasure craft except for a couple of sail boats making very slow progress.
We did encounter a strange incident though. There was a tug crossing in front of us and at first glance I didn't see that it was towing anything. The puzzle was that some 500 feet or so behind it I was water splashing up as if something was following the tug... a whale maybe, or what? Eventually I figured it out... the Tug had a hawser trailing behind with nothing seemingly attached to it... very weird. I thought about hailing the Tug but thought better of it and simply gave the splashing end of the hawser plenty of distance.
Monitoring VHF Channel 14 is very worthwhile in my area as all the traffic up/down the Sound is very carefully monitored by Seattle Traffic... and that leads me to another incident.
At one point on our return course Channel 14 spat out... "Ranger heading West.... plus some other verbiage". At first I thought Seattle Traffic was hailing me as I was heading west. I kept quiet and hoped I was mistaken but it could have been because there was a large cargo boat named COSTCO heading straight for us some 2 miles to my north. 1st Mate said jokingly she hadn't ordered anything from COSTCO as far as she could remember. After a bit with Seattle Traffic demanding... "Ranger heading west..." several times the "Ranger" boat responded and that ended that puzzle for me. I sped up to around 15 kts to make sure COSTCO would pass us to our stern with maybe a mile to spare. What would you have done in a case like this thinking that maybe the "Ranger heading west..." could have meant you ? I did have the thought of replying with... "This is LAXEY Ranger Tug heading west toward Edmonds at 15 kts with COSTCO about 2 miles to our north, Over".
It was a good ride with just a slight breeze hitting us on our Port bow and just a ripple on the water's surface except for the odd swell produced by crossing ferry boats and the odd cargo ship and tow tugs. Didn't see another pleasure craft except for a couple of sail boats making very slow progress.
We did encounter a strange incident though. There was a tug crossing in front of us and at first glance I didn't see that it was towing anything. The puzzle was that some 500 feet or so behind it I was water splashing up as if something was following the tug... a whale maybe, or what? Eventually I figured it out... the Tug had a hawser trailing behind with nothing seemingly attached to it... very weird. I thought about hailing the Tug but thought better of it and simply gave the splashing end of the hawser plenty of distance.
Monitoring VHF Channel 14 is very worthwhile in my area as all the traffic up/down the Sound is very carefully monitored by Seattle Traffic... and that leads me to another incident.
At one point on our return course Channel 14 spat out... "Ranger heading West.... plus some other verbiage". At first I thought Seattle Traffic was hailing me as I was heading west. I kept quiet and hoped I was mistaken but it could have been because there was a large cargo boat named COSTCO heading straight for us some 2 miles to my north. 1st Mate said jokingly she hadn't ordered anything from COSTCO as far as she could remember. After a bit with Seattle Traffic demanding... "Ranger heading west..." several times the "Ranger" boat responded and that ended that puzzle for me. I sped up to around 15 kts to make sure COSTCO would pass us to our stern with maybe a mile to spare. What would you have done in a case like this thinking that maybe the "Ranger heading west..." could have meant you ? I did have the thought of replying with... "This is LAXEY Ranger Tug heading west toward Edmonds at 15 kts with COSTCO about 2 miles to our north, Over".