From foggy Sooke, we motored south across the Strait of Juan de Fuca to check back into the US in Port Angeles. The check-in was effortless; as soon as we crossed the invisible border in the water I used the CBP Roam app to check in. A few minutes later we had a video call with an agent and were cleared back in.
We spent a night at the dock in Port Angeles before sailing east towards Port Townsend, where I’d made a reservation to get the boat hauled out at the DIY yard so we could fix the damage the anchor had done to the gelcoat on the bow of Kestrel when it got loose going around the Hesquiat Peninsula, as well as replacing anodes and other minor maintenance that is easier out of the water (especially in cold water!).
Our haul out day was September 4th (a Thursday), and that same weekend happened to be the Wooden Boat Festival, so as soon as the boat was out of the water we got to work hoping to enjoy a day of the Festival that weekend.
Not only was the Festival a fun thing to walk around, some family and friends met up with us as well, marking the first time we’d seen familiar faces since May!
To even begin our boat work (and to get up and down from inside the boat), we started out by buying a few ladders from the local hardware store, plus a stop (ok, let’s be realistic, several stops) at the nearby chandelry for gelcoat kits, replacement anodes, and a small can of blue (not matched to our bottom paint’s color, but the same stuff) CuKote to patch up some spots of bottom paint we’d noticed flaking off.
While I tackled the prep work on the areas I’d need to gelcoat, my partner worked on patching up areas of flaking bottom paint, first removing any flaky areas around the spots and then doing (over the course of a few days) multiple layers of paint over them.
I sanded around all the damaged gelcoat areas, and then did multiple coats (again, over the course of several days) of gelcoat.
As with most boat work, things ended up taking a bit longer than we’d hoped, but only by a few days, and we were back in the water just over a week later before heading to Port Angeles on September 16th on our way to Neah Bay.
