Sailing Trip Part 1: Feeling Anxious.

We just got back from our big sailing trip and there's way too much I want to say so I will have to break it up into a few different posts. Oh man, we are exhausted! (We went to bed at 10 last night and I woke up at 8:45... Landon is still sleeping and it's 10 am!!) It was definitely a different type of vacation and not what we would call relaxing. There were some really great times, some not so great times, and some absolutely terrible times. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's start at the beginning :)

Day 1: Friday, July 11

Landon and I decided that we wanted to start our trek down the river to Astoria on Friday night instead of Saturday morning. That way we would have a head start and be able to get into Astoria with plenty of time to get a full night's sleep before crossing into the ocean on Sunday. Our first stop was St. Helens (you can see it on the map below).

Here's a screenshot I took to show you how much RIVER we had to go through before we could get to the ocean. We started way down at the bottom right where you see "Vancouver"and Astoria is all the way up the river at the mouth of the Columbia. Where the Columbia meets the ocean is called the "Columbia River Bar." More on that later :)

Anyway, while I was at work on Friday, I decided to check the wind forecast for our trip. We had been checking it all week, but it's good to check frequently. This is what I saw for offshore:

Before I explain what those numbers mean, let me just say that all that red made my head spin, my stomach turn, and my heart begin to pound. See the nice green, blues, and purples on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday? Yeah, that means the wind is nice and calm (4-14 knots per hour). That wind would be PERFECT for our first time sailing out in the ocean. Nice calm seas, a steady breeze, and we would just be lounging around probably bored out of our minds from the lack of excitement...

But do you see all that red? Sunday morning-Wednesday morning = gale force winds. What's a gale you ask? Basically wind strong enough to break down tree branches (well, obviously not in the ocean. There aren't trees in the ocean...) Wind strong enough to make waves that break over the boat and possibly even waves big enough to capsize a boat. Wind above 23 knots are considered dangerous enough for the Coast Guard to issue a "small craft advisory." A small craft is any boat under 65 feet. Our boat is 37.5 feet.

I immediately emailed Landon to tell him the bad news. I felt so sick and it took everything in me to not break down into a hysterical, crying fit at work. We had been planning this trip for MONTHS and now the wind was going to completely mess us up? It was just our luck. We picked July because it is usually a very calm month for weather. No rain. Not a lot of wind. So of course the week we chose to sail into the ocean for the first time happened to be an extremely rare week with crazy gale force winds...

After 8 frantic emails from me, Landon called and helped calm me down. He let me know that we obviously wouldn't be going to Newport if the wind predictions were that crazy. We also discussed other options of where we could go instead of Newport that would allow us to stay closer to shore, where the winds wouldn't be so crazy.

We also decided that having jack lines and life jackets with a harness were a MUST. So after dinner, we headed to our boat to get set-up and then took off to West Marine. Jack lines are basically ropes that go around the boat that you clip into so you can't fall off the boat.

See the yellow rope? Jack lines are a must for going off shore!

So after eating some dinner, spending a small fortune on new life jackets with a harness, and our jack lines, we headed down to our boat to load up.

I'm so mad this picture is blurry (my dang camera was being dumb) but we got a lot of looks and comments about our dogs in the cart with all of our stuff :)

Then it was finally time to go on our much anticipated journey... We literally sailed off into the sunset to St. Helens, about a 4 hour trip. We had amazing wind and even though I got a little delirious from sleepiness (and thought I saw a pirate ghost standing on our bow that was really just Landon) we had a fun time night sailing and arrived to St. Helens at 1 a.m.

I talk about how we walk every night, but some people don't understand... we literally go on a walk every night. Pouring rain, snow, 1 a.m....Doesn't matter. We walk. So we leashed up the pups and walked around St. Helens in the middle of the night. It's a very small town and it felt like I was back in time. I love old buildings and cute little main streets. However, I did get a little creeped out and kept telling Landon it felt like the Zombie Apocalypse because it was so quiet and we were the only ones out ;)

Just picture walking down this street at night, minus the cars. A zombie could jump out at any minute! Image via

It felt good to have a head start on our journey, because it would be a long trek to Astoria in the morning... Stay tuned!