The weather today was fluky and when students arrived for class at noon, going out on the water wasn’t likely as the white caps were stacking up in Port Townsend Bay from the morning blow.  While waiting for students to trickle into class, we practiced the Round Turn and Two Half Hitches both the regular way and also on a bight.  This is a knot we tie to the dock to make fast our dock lines.

Round Turn and Two Half-Hitches

Waiting for the Small Craft Advisory to be removed from the 845 Admiralty Inlet NOAA forecast, we went out on the upper deck of Northwest Maritime Center to do our weather observations.  The Beaufort Wind Scale goes from Force 0 (Calm) to Force 12 (Hurricane).  Our students were asked to determine both the wind speed and also the direction.  As we broke into small groups, the wind veered 180 degrees and lessened dramatically.  A front arrived with some drizzle that turned into rain.  In less than a 20 minute time span the decision was made to go out on Townshend for a row!

Luca took leadership as coxswain and got us into the bosun’s locker for gear packing and raingear donning.  After boarding the boat and loading gear we left the dock with virtually no wind blowing.  The sea-state was calm and we rowed out of Point Hudson marina with barely any other vessel traffic or ripples on the water.

Blowing the horn on the way out of Point Hudson Marina

A Crew-Overboard-Drill allowed Luca to practice his maneuvering and rowing commands and Connor performed the role of pointer to keep an eye on the fender.  After successfully bringing aboard the fender we discussed the process and what might be done differently next time.  We also were able to row near the Point to observe the boat aground on the sandbar from yesterday’s storm and also our Purple Martin birdboxes (see blog post from last year:  Purple Martin Birdboxes!).

Snack and Moment of Silence (MOS) were important pieces of our ritual and a Common Loon was spotted from Townshend as we slowly drifted near the old ferry dock.  Some of the observations from our MOS were: cool to see Whidbey Island disappear behind the rain, nice to see signs of the forest on the water’s surface, and peaceful to be out in the rain.

On the way home coxswain Luca described the 7 Stages of Rowing Enlightenment:

Stage 1:  Row the longboat forward and back with no damage to the oars. 

Stage 2:  Talk and row at the same time. 

Stage 3:  Row with your eyes closed- in sync. 

Stage 4:  One handed rowing. 

Stage 5:  Eat or drink while rowing.  Don’t miss a beat. 

Stage 6:  All oars create one splash at every stroke. 

Stage 7:  Plane the longboat over the water.

Today as a team, we got to Stage 3: rowing with our eyes closed and in-sync.  We also sang a sea shantey “South Australia” as we arrived back at Point Hudson in time to end class.  We closed class with a Salish Sea Report from Luca on local Orca population decline and he posed the question “How can we help Salish Sea Orcas?”

Something memorable from today in student and staff’s reflections were: how the sea-state changed dramatically, problem-solving during the Crew-Overboard drill, rowing with eyes closed, rowing in the ‘heavyish’ rain, and watching the wind change more than two times in the first hour of class.

Thanks for following along on our Bravo Team Blog!  Next week we’ll have a couple of new students and we hope to continue going out on the water as weather allows.  🙂