Sunny warm days with a breeze. Couldn’t ask for a better weekend.

Cruised Multnoma channel to Saint Helens Saturday morning and enjoyed a
windless warm afternoon at the Saint Helens public dock. There was lots of
Halloween activities in Saint Helens. The people here take Halloween very
seriously. They celebrate for the entire month!

Sunday was a fabulously sunny day with 15 to 20 knot winds coming down the
Columbia. So sailing we went.

Kelly, an internet sailing friend, showed up just before noon and Al a few
minutes later. Shoving off with 10 knot winds on the stern and 2 knot
current on the bow. Easy peasy.

Once we got north of Sand Island and away from the sand bars we put out the
mainsail and genoa in 15 knot winds. We then put out the stay sail and
trimmed. Winds built and we were soon pushing 7 knots moving quickly past
a 26 foot sloop. With winds getting to 20 knot and the boat healing we
decided to pull in the Genoa and rely on the self tacking staysail and a
more comfortable 6 knot ride.

Heading back we took a broad reach with staysail luffing slowly. The Genoa
would have been better but we were getting lazy and jibing the Genoa across
the stay is a lot of work!

Returning to Saint Helens, we parted ways with Kelly and enjoyed a brew in
the sun warmed cockpit.

I stayed on board for the night playing a bit with ham radio. To bad there
is so much radio frequency pollution these days. Hard to hear anything
through all the chopping power supplies in use.

It was a nice late season trip with the full canvas enclosure keeping
things warm.