Yesterday the Pacific Northwest lost not only a great sailor but one of the classiest gentleman I have ever had the privilege to sail with. Dick Robbins, the owner and skipper of the legendary 68- foot Perry designed ICON passed away from complications of a stroke he had suffered recently. His talents went far beyond sailing having designed and built revolutionary tunnel boring machines, including the ones that dug the Chunnel beneath the English Channel. He was a delight to sail with as there was never a cross word nor did he ever raise his voice. Just always a very quiet competence as well as a love of sailing and having fun while on the water. He made the world a much better place and he will be missed.
Lots going on this weekend and plenty of great weather to go along with it. The Van Isle 360 has a huge and very talented fleet on a very challenging course. The Seventy48 project doesn’t involve sailing but it is still a very cool event. Basically, any way you can get from Tacoma to Port Townsend by way of rowing, paddling or pedaling and by pedaling I don’t mean on land. It all has to be on the water, 70 miles in 48 hours. They start tonight at 1900 hours going out of the Foss Waterway, up Colvos Passage then to the Port Townsend Canal or Hadlock Canal, then finish in Port Townsend. A great tune-up for the R2AK which starts on the 3rd. We’ll have a special update for that on the 2nd of June.
May 31 500MB 
May 31 Surface Analysis 
June 1 Surface Forecast 
June 2 Surface Forecast 
June 3 Surface Forecast 
June 4 Surface Forecast
As you can see from the Surface Analysis, we have a weak high-pressure system off the Northern California coast and a weak low-pressure system in Eastern Washington. As our fog burns off and the sun heats up the land, this will bring a strong onshore flow down the Straits of JdF bringing with it Gale Warnings for the Central and Eastern Straits as well as a Small Craft Advisory for Admiralty Inlet. After midnight, this will ease and we should have a very nice weekend to be on the water.
For the Van Isle folks, this will mean a nice beat from Nanaimo to Deep Bay in 8 to 15 knots of northwesterly.
For the Seventy48 teams, there will be northerly of about 8-12-knots from the start until they get into Colvos Passage and then after about 2100 hours they should have just about ideal conditions for whatever manner of propulsion they have selected. After midnight, there maybe a drainage east-northeasterly of 5-10-knots in the early morning hours then as the sun comes up that will die until the onshore flow develops in the early afternoon bringing 10-12-knots of northwesterly down the Sound.
Of course, if your paddling or rowing you’re going to want to keep track of the tidal current however with most of these craft being of very shallow draft you can really get in close to stay out of the anti-water. It seems to me they took some fun out of the event by making them go through the Hadlock Canal but they probably had a very good reason for doing that. It’s just that in the flood tide you can get 3 to 3.5 knots of current in there while you could avoid that by going around the outside of Marrowstone.
The good news is that since the current always flows north in Colvos Passage, it will be a free ride until they get up to Blake Island. The other good news is that the currents in the central Sound will be less than one knot almost all weekend. In Admiralty Inlet, the max currents will be around two knots and since the shortest possible course will take keep you on the beach anyway, you’ll be able to avoid the worst of it until Hadlock.
Currents at West Point
Friday
2000 Slack
Saturday
0018 Max Flood .72 knots
0330 Slack
0518 Max Ebb .47 knots
0742 Slack
1300 Max Flood .89 knots
1618 Slack
1800 Max Ebb .48 knots
2054 Slack
All in all, it looks like a lot of exercise but should be a total hoot.
Be safe and have fun out there.
Bruce has raced and cruised the Pacific Northwest his entire life. He earned a Bachelor’s of Science from the University of Washington in Biological Oceanography and learned meteorology “to keep from getting kicked around on the race course.” Bruce spent nearly two decades as Associate Publisher for Northwest Yachting Magazine, retiring in mid-2015, and was the chairman of the board of trustees for the Northwest Marine Trade Association in 2014. (photo of Bruce driving Playstation is a bit dated, but cool)
No wonder you and Lang won so many races