Newport News

Okay. We left Astoria around 2:00AM on Monday morning. Even in the dark, we had a smooth bar crossing. I called it a swell crossing, but Sandy didn't think that was so funny. She said it was probably a good thing it was dark so we couldn't see the size of the swells.

Once we got across the bar and heading south about 5 miles out, we took turns doing watch. 3 hours on, 3 hours off. We had the auto pilot going so pretty much just had to be sure it stayed on course, watch for other traffic, of which there was very little, and steer around crab pots.
Not enough wind to put up much sail, although the boys put up the jib for a bit to help stablize the boat. But then Sandy and I rolled it back up because the sheets kept flapping and knocking things around. The rest of the trip was beautiful. Sunny skies, but cold. We were all bundled up. We saw lots of sea lions, sun fish, sea birds of course, and the boys claimed they saw whale spouts and Michael saw an actual whale tail diving. He has a picture of it, that is sort of like the pictures of the Loch Ness Monster. You know, where the photographer swears it's the real thing, but the rest of us go, "Well..."

So now we are in Newport for a couple days. We had a hose leak on the way down so the boys have fixed that, and we have tweaked several things that needed it. Looks like we'll be leaving tomorrow to continue south. Weather is favorable. It is very strange weather for this time of year, and has slowed us down a lot.

Chris' brother who lives about an hour away, arrived this morning in his DeLorean, so we all had our pictures taken in it, and got to go for a little ride, one at a time. Pretty fun! I volunteered to do the shopping so I got to the grocery store in it, plus down to the docks to buy some tuna steaks. It was so cool. Everyone who saw us stared and asked about it. One man was walking by as I was climbing in and said, "Look, Honey. That's a DeLorean, and look, she's getting in. Look, look! She's just about to get in! Honey, look!" It was so funny!

This afternoon I'm going to bake more chocolate chip cookies. I think I may have opened a can of worms by bringing them in the first place. It seems now to almost be a demand that we have them in stock!
Patty