20 July - We woke at 06:00 and, with everything ready, raised the anchor  and headed off down channel escorted by lots of fishing charter boats.  Once  clear of Jenny reef we set our heading (just East of South), put up the sails and were off!  By Midday were out of sight of land but the wind was not filling in as forecast so we were swapping between sailing when we could and motoring when there was too little wind.  By 8pm we had been motoring most of the time in very little wind and so made the call to head for Astoria as we couldn’t guarantee the wind.  Having said that though, we were in more or less flat calm in little swell.  The weather was mostly overcast but what kept us most entertained was keeping a good look out for whales, who showed themselves regularly to us, often quite close.  In the flat calm, when sailing, their blowing could be heard a long way off.  At the same time (around 8pm) I was getting fed up with motoring though and, with at least some wind coming mainly over our stern, we poled out the Genoa and set up the wind vane.  Luckily, the wind settled to a steady 10 knots over the stern and allowed us to then sail, using the wind vane to steer us, right through the night albeit at only about 3 knots  

This cruise ship was a bit too close for our comfort and we ended up calling him to confirm he was aware of us and had a plan to not hit us!

21 July  - As the grey dawn came to us, the wind died again unfortunately and by 07:00 we were motoring again.  Our 24 hour distance was very low (at around 60 NM)  but we weren't in a race and had plenty of food so no concerns there! With very little wind, we continued on motoring through the day making steady progress.  WAround 16:00 we got sick of the noise again so set sails and tried to get something out of the light wind for an hour or two and to rest the engine but we were then back to motoring as, into the evening the wind direction became very changeable and the seas started to get messy.   We noticed that, now we were on the continental shelf, the sea state was definitely not as stable as over the ocean and when we went past canyons, we were learning to expect more confused seas.  During this time we also saw our first sharks with a couple coming very close inboard to investigate us. Now that we were committed to going into Astoria, we had calculated that the best time to cross the bar would be at 13:00 on the 22nd (high slack).  This therefore gave us another problem, we needed to 'slow down' so as not to arrive too early! Through the night we tried to sail when we could but once the sails started slatting, we went back to very slow motoring through very sloppy swell.  The high point of the night though was the amazing light show put on by the Bio luminescence..  Not only was our wake lit up through the night but there would be occasional explosions of light all around the boat and bright streaks shooting out from under the boat. Whether these were fish, dolphins sharks or ? We didn't know but it was a very welcome distraction from the otherwise unrewarding passage. We were now starting to encounter small groups of fishing boats which at least gave us something to keep us awake as we kept plodding south  

22 July - Through the night we had seen some lights both out in the fishing grounds and towards the coast which at least gave us some confidence we hadn't sailed off the edge of the earth.  As dawn broke we found ourselves off Astoria Canyon in lumpy seas.  All of a sudden the sea went from a bit lumpy to 'washing machine cycle'  I was below and after being thrown around the sea berth stuck my head up to see Heidi having a white knuckle ride on the wheel.  Looking behind I could see waves in all directions high above the boat.  With nothing to do but hang on and punch through Heidi pushed up the power and we rode out quite a rodeo for 20 - 30 minutes until the seas settled down again, then it was back to steady plodding.  I was up early for my shift and so around 08:00 with us drifting around to the south of the Columbia river entrance, we started on the admin of clearing in.  We connected to our US phone  esim card and fired up the Customs clearing app (CBP Roam).  We put in our details and held our breath waiting for our online interview.  After a short while though, they just cleared us in, no interview needed!  Next we contacted the coast guard for advice on crossing the bar and they made it clear they couldn't provide anything beyond he published conditions (we learnt later that they had tried to help people in the past and been sued for their efforts - so much for the good Samaritan clause in the US!) Lastly we contacted Port of Astoria and they confirmed there would be no problem accommodating us.  So with all our admin out of the way and weather clearing with patchy sun, all we had to do was get over the notorious Columbia River Bar!  High slack, when the tide turned,  was at 13:30.  Our only problem was knowing where we should be at High slack (the bar channel is over 14 NM long and the tide mark was half way down it!) so we hedged or bets and aimed the go into the channel at 12:30. 

The approach was fairly straight forward but the seas were fairly choppy going in.  As we got within a mile of the channel entrance it was reassuring to see a pilot boat hovering around us (we like to think that, although the coast guard couldn't advise us they may have asked the pilot boat to hover around for us in case anything went wrong!)  On entering the channel, we were confronted by some particularly large swells (Although according to the locals this was just the usual!), although thankfully not breaking.  We had then about a 40 minute roller coaster ride down these swells inside the channel before things started to calm down.  Thankfully there was no other traffic to share the ride with and so Heidi did an amazing job just 'riding the waves'.  Once through the bar, things settled down and we motored the rest of the way into Astoria, finally having a bit of sun to welcome us in. 

Flying our first curtesy flag

We had made our first foreign port! After fuelling up we pulled across to our allotted dock space, took a deep breath and had a celebratory sip of rum!

Be True 2 - safe and sound on the dock in Astoria

That evening we bumped into a great group from the Astoria yacht club who had just completed their race night and got some more advice on getting back out through the bar.  After a brief walk around we headed for a blissful uninterrupted night of sleep!