Scary Ferry
The ferry – and you should know, I’m a newbie to the ferry system and assumed they were too big to even feel the waves – was bouncing around like a toy boat. Pitching and yawing and bending and shuddering.
So … a quick story from this weekend.
The first half of the trip home from Doe Bay was uneventful, even though I noticed the ferry had a hard time getting to the dock on Orcas – it actually bounced off of the big pilings that I never understood what they are for before. We got about halfway to Anacortes when the captain came over the loudspeaker: “Everyone please take a seat and stay seated. It’s going to get rough ahead.”
We left the sheltering islands and headed across the sound, and the sea was angry that day my friends. The ferry – and you should know, I’m a newbie to the ferry system and assumed they were too big to even feel the waves – was bouncing around like a toy boat. Pitching and yawing and bending and shuddering. We started to feel sick up top in the cabin and I suggested we go down to the car, which was way worse.
By then the front of the ferry was crashing headlong into swells and huge twenty foot spray’s were shooting up into the tunnel where we were parked – and the wind was whistling by so fast it felt like you might get blown out of the tunnel – so we just stayed in there getting sea sick, watching the water come over the bow and the huge boat making odd groaning noises as the lights in the distance shifted alarmingly from side to side.
Finally we made our way into Anacortes harbor, and again they had trouble getting us to the dock. We rolled off and thanked our lucky stars to be on land, as they nonchalantly loaded the next passengers onto the boat for the return trip.
