14 September 2008 Sunday
o930 We head out of Kerry West Marina on Westport Slough on the tail end of the ebb tide making our way to the Columbia River. The morning is sunny and we meet the Therese Selmer inbound from Majuro about 1000. Wow, another ship from Majuro! At 1045 an inbound vessel is coming up on our stern, so I look at the name through my binoculars and it is the Fortune Spirit. Having just dropped my crew Linda Fortune off in Cathlamet I told Ann we needed to get some good pictures for Linda. We head over to the nearest Channel marker and wi
ng dam and wait in 30 ft of water. The Fortune Spirit approaches and Ann is clicking away to get the perfect picture with the wing dam is front and the ship's image is seen through the channel markers uprights. I just take a quick pic with my new Cell Phone.
The Fortune Spirit is from Hong Kong. She is coming in empty and will be going out filled to the water line.
neutral or reverse in a flash. Coming up is a small sandbar and marshy island to port. As we approach the upper portion the waters don't look good with grass growing in it. The depth sounder reads 5,4, the gear is in neutral with the tide on our stern, 3, and 2 read and I am in reverse and off the mud. Back tracking our course from the gps I am looking for a better route, Ann is reading water depths off the chart for me. Maybe we should be on the other side of the island, I'm thinking outloud? 2 fishing boats are buzzing down the slough and they have in-out drives on their boats. We work our way over in that direction and proceed up river. We find double digit water, I'm smiling again, but at any second it can change. We go slow 3-4 knots until we have deeper water on the chart and under us. Ann and I sigh with relief. There are many houses along the slough with Bow picker fishing boats on their docks. One very large cruising boat 60+ ft. We come upon our next slough which on some charts is called Beaver Slough. On this corner there is a nice property with several boat sheds, lots of skidoos, canoes, kayaks, and 2 hydroplane boats that are about 10 ft long. This slough is much narrower and winding. Shallow on the convex side and 20+ft deep on the concave side of the river. We are still traveling in caution mode and finding the majority of water 7 feet. There are no more houses, just wild country.At 1205 we pass a very narrow inlet, slow down and go in neutral checking the chart and conclude this inlet is the Clatskanie River. "Oh Boy," I say to Ann, "this does not look good". In El Paso where I grew up we'd call this a drainage ditch. " I'd never go up th
is alone, but since you are with me, Ann, we'll continue." In we go and now I am in steering stand-up mode with hand on gear shift. Its a winding creek, not river and for the most part we are in 4-6 feet of water. I've heard of people trying to anchor in here and loosing their ground tackle(anchor and chain).I can't imagine anyone trying to anchor in here. There are lots of fallen trees along the shore, muddy water and I'm not sure I could turn the boat around in some places. As long as the water is here we will proceed. We arrive at a train tressel which remains open except for when , of course, there is a train. The water is deep in this bend in the river. I say to Ann, "I know this, I remember this coming on the Lewis and Clark Train to Astoria for the Bicentennial." I didn't at the time realize this was Clatskanie. We had to wait for the tressel men to come down and swing the tracks around so we could cross. I had a window seat on the diesel 3 car train. What fun was that.
At 1300 we arrive at Humps Resturant and have 14 ft of water at the do
ck. We have a nice lunch, and decide there is no way I'm going to be up here at low tide. The tide is still flooding when we leave, so I plug in my track back course and we reverse the whole trip. This time I have 5-7 feet of water under the hull. We had no room for dessert at lunch so this is our piece of cake for the day- getting out of Clatskanie.
Its 1505 when we get to Wallace slough and head up river. To our surprise we see a snow capped mountain ahead of us and first response is there's St. Helens, but then after looking longer I realize it is Mt. Rainer. From this angle it is double peaked and still snow capped whereas St. Helens is primarily bare. I have seen Rainer from this angle before on other parts of the river and it has this double peak. (I look up Wallace Slough today on the Images of the Columbia River and they even have a photo of our view. Take a peek at this peak.) We want to exit the up river side this time and again the exit waters do not look that great. I choose a course but there are some bad spots on the chart, but maybe we will be lucky with the high tide. The depth sounder is screaming 3 ft. Which means we have 1.5 feet of water under the keel. I'm looking at the bottom with long sea grass and we drift through the area in neutral and find our deep water. I want to see if we can anchor at my newly discovered anchorage, but its sunday and the jet skiers are out, people on my private beach and its hot and will be sunny the rest of the day. I decide to head on upriver to Walker island dock again and show Ann this spot. It is a favorite of many people. It will be shady, and we can explore in Pashmina. Ann is up for some more traveling so we enter the Columbia River again. Normally there is little ship traffic on Sunday, but not today. We see the Ace Bridge from Port Villa -Vanuatu, Astro Coach from Panama, Century Hwy #3 from Panama( I have seen this ship before) Cyprus Trail from Norway. We tied up to the dock at 1730. Hira takes some time to look over her ongoing list of ships and hailing ports to double check that she has seen the Century Hwy #3.
Days run 26nm
Total 148nm
