So it appears that I've been accepted by the legendary Marty Loken to participate in the Salish 100 sailboat "raid" in June, simply by the sheer fact of signing up with a boat on time! It's the inaugural 100 mile sailing/rowing odyssey from Olympia to Port Townsend. It's a week-long adventure with 6 camping stops along the way. It's too bad it doesn't culminate during the Wooden Boat Festival in Sept. Oh well, another great reason to see PT in 2019! I hope there's a t-shirt...

I'm unbelievably excited to participate in our newly completed Passagemaker.  It points like a dream and has a huge payload, so I think I'll be fine. As an afterthought, after looking at the chart, I could probably participate in the party at the end and the next day just turn around and sail back around to Elger Bay on Camano Island and walk home. Nice...

When we get back home to the PNW in May (we're currently running charters on our Tartan 37 in the USVI), I'm going to experiment with sleeping aboard, possibly making some sort of tambour/roll-top desk thing that I can unroll at the end of the day to sleep under a boom-tent across the thwarts. I think I'd actually prefer just to pitch my tent ashore. At 49 years old, this is much more my style than the the R2AK silliness that I've been involved with over the last few years (rigging-wise).

Anyway, I'll keep everyone abreast of the situation as it progresses. I've actually seriously considered the Texas 200 and possibly the Everglades Challenge, but this is definitely mo better for several reasons.

For those of us who have discussed a progressive sail among the San Juans, this is the next best thing (i.e. someone else is organizing it), but we may want to pick that discussion back up at some point.  If you're interested in participating, you can email Marty Loken at [email protected] or check out his thread on The Wooden Boat Forum.