A Hint and a Tease of a New Sailing Season
February 9th was one of those rare mid-winter days when the weather clears and the sun warms the land enough to create a gentle on-shore NW air flow along the Columbia River in Portland, Oregon. With the Pacific El Nino effect giving us above normal temperatures and a drier year it seems a little wierd that the East Coast is getting slammed with some of the worst snow storms and blizzards on record.
Since we only got out 3 times in January and this was the first opportunity to sail this month we decided to go even though the NOAA weather service was predicting light East winds. We were surprised to find a light but building NW wind, which is the classical afternoon set up in the warmer summer months. We could see the breeze starting to ripple across the water and by the time we got the covers off and out of the marina we had about 7 knots. That is just enough to gently push us up river. The wind slowly built and by the time we got up to around PDX airport we were getting a steady 10 to 12 knots so we had enough to turn into it and have a little close wind sailing on the way back. As the sun started getting low the wind died out and we had a beautiful sunset to enjoy while we put the boat away.
Heading Up River
Nice Wind by the Airport