Pocock to Ballard Locks, December 2, 2000
Last Saturday (12/2) the Sound Rowers had their annual meeting at the George Pocock Rowing Center. This place is located below the I-5 bridge that crosses Lake Union, and roughly across the channel from Ivar's Salmon House. As the Sound Rowers planned after the meeting to have a non-race outing to the Hiram Chittendam Locks and back, I decided to attend along with my Escapade.
The weather over the past week was finally getting into the winter norm for Seattle: gray, wet, cold and breezy. The forecast for Saturday was no different, so I scrambled to prepare my boat for the worst. After applying some Novus scratch remover to the windshield (great stuff!), I gingerly applied some RainX to a small corner. As it didn't dissolve or otherwise destroy the view through the plastic, I then applied it to the rest of the windshield.
As for the bimini top, which has a tendency to allow water to drip through the zipper, I lined it with the remnants of a vinyl shower curtain, using safety pins through the nylon webbing that is strategically placed on the bimini, and around the sides. It is not readily visible from outside the boat, and does not look too bad from the inside, either.
I was ready for winter.
Saturday dawned, looking just as nasty as ever, but not actually raining. The drive over Lake Washington on the 520 bridge showed a bit of a breeze stirring up the water, but nothing to write home about. As expected, there was no one at the Gasworks Park boat launch, so I was in my boat in the water about 5 minutes after arriving. As the meeting with Sound Rowers was in about 15 minutes, I headed straight there, and docked with 10 minutes to spare.
The meeting ran until about 12:30 PM, following which we all socialized by the exercise equipment waiting for the group to form to go boating that day. While the home-made cookies and brownies brought by one of the members were quite delicious, I decided to scurry off in my boat to Ivar's for some salmon & chips, hoping to finish them before the group departed.
By this time the sun was out, most of the clouds had dissipated, and the temperature was in the 50's (F). Quickly tying up at Ivar's dock, I ran to the fast food window and waited in line. And waited. Ten minutes later I finally could place my order and, shortly before the rowing group was to leave, I got my food. Running down to the dock I could see the other boats making preparations to leave, so I jumped into the boat and pedaled to meet them.
As it turned out, several of the other boaters were merely warming up and waiting for the rest of the boats to hit the water. I had a couple of minutes to start eating, and there were no takers for my offers of salmon and french fries.
As we headed towards Gasworks Park I took a number of photos with my Canon SLR of the kayaks and the two person rowing shell in our group. They are randomly distributed throughout this monologue.
About this time I was getting quite warm, so I stripped down to my bike shorts, boating shirt and hat. I thought about removing the windshield, too, but decided that in trying to keep up with the others the aerodynamics outweighed the loss in comfort. If the sun were not out or if I had brought my sun screen I would have taken off my shirt, too! In contrast several of the other kayakers and rowers were wearing jackets and hats to keep comfortable.
We pretty much had the water to ourselves, encountering only one or two yachts traveling to and from the locks during the entire time we were on the water. I managed to keep up with the slowest kayakers at my typical 4.2 mph rate, nibbling on a french fry or salmon chunk from time to time.
The faster people regrouped with us a couple of times, at the Fremont Bridge and later just short of the Ballard bridge. Most of them decided to turn around at that point, but another fellow and I decided to continue on to the locks and return.
Much of Lake Union and the Ship Canal through where we traveled is what one would call a working waterfront, or an industrial area. We passed by hundreds of ships and boats, and many ship yards. There were boats from all over the west coast, some being prepared for shipment to Hawaii, fish processors, trawlers, multimillion dollar yachts, ancient tugboats, various factory ships, Coast Guard ships, dry docks, etc. Some of these were tied up three or four abreast. Most of them were great behemoths, looming high over our heads as we passed by.
On the return trip past Adobe in Fremont I decided that the sea gulls would like a chance at my remaining french fries, so I began tossing them out one at a time. Such a commotion! These birds drove themselves into a frenzy diving after them, so much so that I wondered if they might try to land on my boat and grab them before I threw them! Luckily, the food supply ran out before any of them tried to do so, and an oncoming yacht helped to divert their attention.
About two hours after starting the 9+ mile trip to the locks I returned to the boat launch, loaded up and headed home. What a gorgeous day it was to be on the water.