An Unseasonably Warm Winter Day Boating in Puget Sound

Unseasonably warm winter days suck if you’re a skier. If you happen to own a Boston Whaler, though, they’re pretty damn nice. The Seattle Boat Show is going on now, and I remember that during last year’s show it snowed. Usually I don’t get the boat out until at least late March, but I couldn’t pass up the chance to get it out of the barn today. It’s really good to run it every now and then.

With the encouragement of my boss and coworkers, I made the impromptu decision to take the afternoon off. It took me an hour to prep the boat; usually I do it the night before. Fortunately this winter I had decided to leave the batteries in the boat on a charger. Otherwise, it would have taken me another half hour to install them.

My boat should be the easiest one there is to single hand, but I was way out of practice. I realized that it might have been three full years since I’ve gone boating by myself. It’s good that there were very few other people at the boat launch, so that I could hog the dock while I figured it out. The first person I met there walked up to me and said, “Hey, don’t you have a YouTube channel?” It was my first experience of social media fame.

Clumsy single handing aside, it was a gorgeous afternoon to be on the water. I almost never go boating later in the day, so all the familiar sights looked different. I decided to go to Langley. While crossing Possession Sound I spotted two harbor porpoises, then three more, then another pair. They seemed to be everywhere, along with lots of interesting flocks of birds. I had the sea almost to myself; I saw only a couple of other boats all evening. The sea, especially near Langley, was glassy smooth. When I got to Langley I checked the time and realized it would be foolish to moor. I needed to get back in time to wash the boat up before dark. So, I just whizzed past the marina and headed over to Camano Head just for fun.

On the way home the evening light really lit up downtown Everett like I’ve never seen it. For a couple of minutes the sun was reflecting off anything glass. When I got closer for a better view, the light had already changed. I managed to pull up to the fuel dock without any help from anybody, and I did the same at the boat launch. There was a guy at the fuel dock with maybe a 30- foot boat that he single-handed skillfully. He made me feel like a dope. I got all my dock lines wet when they fell in the water, but that’s a solo skill I haven’t mastered yet.

When I got the boat back to the house it was just before sunset. I rushed to clean the boat in daylight and made record time. I got it into the garage by 6:00, and had a simple dinner ready when my wife got home. When she asked me how my day was, I replied, “Ordinary”.