Sailing the Puget Sound

Richard Neumann (neumannr@gte.net)
Sat, 31 Oct 1998 11:21:56 -0800


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West Wight Potter Website at URL
http://www.lesbois.com/wwpotter/
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It's interesting to read what's considered a threat to sailing in the Puget
sound area:

I read "...then comes the Straits of Juan De Fuca...with SERIOUS
Tidal Flows that will send you out to the deep blue Pacific in a real hurry.
All this while dodging Trallers, Gill Nets, Massive Oil Tankers that cannot
see your little sailboat (assuming they care..) and so forth.

After all that the hardened Sea Traveller can handle any Huge Freighter
bearing down on him so the commercial traffic is a moot point."

On my first sail in the sound, the freighters were of no great concern -
there were only a few, you could see them coming a long way away and they
were along a well-defined track. More of a concern were the cross-sound
ferries which move right along at 20 kts and the 40 kt hydrofoils and high
speed foot-ferries. The hydrofoils and foot-ferries move right along at
speeds just slower than a WW-2 torpedo. Add to that a misty day where long
range vision is impossible. Sailing the sound requires that you consult tide
tables, even more important and complex are the location-specific current
tables AND finally the ferry schedule. Moving north to south in the sound
you cut across many cross-sound ferry routes each of which has, roughly, two
ships crossing per hour. Add to that the fact that a sailor is probably
tacking across their sailing route with uncertain winds. Hey! it's fun up
here.

Dick Neumann