To The Dalles

Sailing with Dummies (Seattle to The Dalles Edition)
Saturday, April 25, 2009
by Mike

Another early start. The anchor was raised at 5:15 and we were off. At a SOG (speed over ground) of two knots. That sure wouldn’t get us to The Dalles by sundown. The Dalles was about 80 nautical miles ahead. At two knots it would take 40 hours. We started zigzagging and cutting corners to stay more in the shallow water with less current and we able to increase our SOG to 5-6 knots most of the time.



Midday we arrived at the Bonneville Locks. At a lock is where the water level changes. When a boat is going upstream they drain the lock to let the boat float in. The Bonneville Lock is 680 feet long and 85 feet wide. When the boat (or boats) is in, they close the doors and let water in from upstream. That raises the level in the lock and the boat rises vertically. In Bonneville the Minnow was raised about 64 feet in the lock, which was the level of the river upstream. Then they opened the other end of the lock and we drove out and continued up the river.

























One interesting thing about locks is the echo. We think it’s important to play a baritone when in a lock. It works best when the water is really low. Sometimes the lock operators have comments about it. This time the operator was polite and ignored us. The time from entering the lock to leaving it was about 30 minutes. You can see more about our experiences in locks here: the red boat




As the day went on, the wind increased. We put a sail up and went faster. Then the wind increased and we reefed (pulled half of it in) the sail. We were going even faster. Then the wind increased even more and we took down the sail. With this big increase in SOG we ended up getting to The Dalles way before dark.

Between Hood River and The Dalles the wind was more than 30 knots with gusts of more than 40 knots. That’s where there were lots of wind surfers. Even though the water was in the lower 50s, there were lots of them skimming around the river like water bugs.

When we got there Meredith was at the dock watching us park. He had watched us coming down the river from the highway and met us there. That was a nice reception.

Daily Cuisine: Later that night Julie, Marilyn, Meredith, Bob, and I had a surprising evening. We went to Cousins to eat. It was quite an evening – one to write down on the calendar. The surprise? Meredith paid.