Hi Folks: Over the last week or so, Debbie and I decided to laze down the Columbia River from Portland Oregon to the Pacific Ocean. I thought I'd write a little travelogue on our adventure for those interested. Our boat is not a "true trawler". So delete here if you are a purist. We have a 40 foot Tollycraft tri-cabin which run with.... are you ready?... GASOLINE engines. That's right. Big old Chrysler 440 CI V8's circa 1973 before fuel-mileage or environment was a factor. 660 HP of gasoline-guzzling power. We love em and wouldn't trade for diesels if we could. And when the times comes (2,500 hours now) I will replace them with identical units. Second chance to delete if you are a diesel purist. So to get the statistics out of the way... At 15 kts (14 upriver, 16 downriver) we burn.... Ahem... 27 gallons / hour. At 13 we burn a little more, at 18 we burn about the same. We travel at about 10-12 kts on a leisurely cruise. We carry 440 gallons of the good stuff so we have a pretty good range. This trip we went about 250 miles and used 397 gallons. It's about 110 river miles from Portland to the Columbia Bar. The weather was spectacular with 75 degree sunny days and 55 degree nights. As I have mentioned before, the Columbia River is amazingly unspoiled and the small boat traffic is usually sparse. It is a very beautiful river to cruise. We anchored out in various bays and sloughs the first 2 nights and saw no other boats at anchorage. We then spent 2 nights at West Basin moorage in Astoria Oregon then went another 15 miles West to one of our favorite hang-outs, Ilwaco, WA. This little town of Ilwaco sits right in the lee of Cape Disappointment which overlooks the infamous Columbia Bar and the open Pacific Ocean. We spent 3 enjoyable nights at the guest moorage there and explored the local area, ate like kings, and generally indulged in an orgy of reading in the sunshine and generally doing nothing. Two things made this trip more interesting than most. The Salmon are apparently back. That is, the Salmon, which had been fished to near extinction have begun to make a spectacular resurgence and one of the most prolific Salmon fishing grounds in the world is the entrance to the Columbia River. It's called "Buoy 10" fishing, buoy 10 being the fisheries dividing line between the river and the ocean fisheries. As a result of this recreational Salmon fishery a certain madness overtakes small-boat recreational fisherman there. They leave wives, home and work for a total-immersion (pun intended) fishing experience and a chance at the big Chinook Salmon. The more successful the fishing, the crazier they get. Every motel, campground and RV park is filled to bursting for miles around. OK, so here's the scene... We're talking about Buoy 10 here, well out into the ocean side of the Columbia Bar. This is not the most forgiving piece of water I can think of... Graveyard of the Pacific and all that... Imagine about 500 small boats, everything that will float and some just barely, including car-top 12 foot aluminum jobs and rubber dinghies all setting out in the dark and morning fog to "fish". And fish they do, all in the same small area, clustered around Buoy 10. It looks like Napoleon's camp at Waterloo out there. So it isn't long before the "maydays" start coming into USCG Cape D. Everything from I ran out of beer, to out of gas, to shipping water, to fistfights over fouled lines. To a fisherman, anything that interrupts fishing is a mayday. So we went out there just to marvel at the spectacle. In the 2 hours we were there, USCG Cape D responded to 4 maydays usually with their fast SAFE RIBs to tow boaters back who were drifting towards the rocks or jetties. Those 10 year old outboards that haven't been run since 1988 just aren't what they used to be. One charter fisherman somehow lost a client overboard and they could not get him back aboard. Of course the State fisheries guys are out there checking everybody and usually a CG 47 is out there looking for gross safety violations... they stay busy. This was a great day too. Calm, sunny, and the bar was like a lake most times. As I've mentioned, this place can get very, very nasty. In fact it can and does get deadly with 20 foot breaking rollers pushing in from the ocean against the river current and ebbing tide. It can change quickly too so even if you head back it might be rough bash into safe harbor. Oh, there are also 600 to 1000 foot ocean going freighters coming and going in their narrow navigation channel, which happens to run right adjacent to Buoy 10. Some recreational fishermen have a hard time grasping their fishing doesn't supercede 30,000 tons bearing down at 20 kts. The wonder of it is why we don't lose more than the 4 or 5 a year that die there. But give it time. As I mentioned the fishery is newly resurgent and it will take a while to reach critical mass. So that was a spectacle worth seeing. We took lots of pictures. The other "big deal" that is building is Lewis and Clark. Everywhere there are Lewis and Clark related "stuff". This is just getting cranked up for the next few years. I am already sick of Lewis and Clark and these folks haven't even started yet. It's apparently going to be a very, very big deal. But here's the problem. Many people want to retrace L&C route... to experience the river as L&C did. As in "Gee dear let's get a canoe and a tent and we'll take the kids canoeing down the Columbia River to the ocean. How hard can it be it's just a river." And many outfitters and guides are already promoting family adventure trips down the Columbia by Canoe. I envision strings of these absolutely inexperienced canoeists and kayakers overturning in the massive and cold Columbia River and the consequences are worrisome. If you have plans for Lewis and Clarking, please take the Columbia River very seriously. I have run into some of the nastiest weather and seas I have ever encountered upriver above the Bonneville Dam. That's a long way from the ocean. There's a place called Wind Mountain and it is aptly named as in 50 mph winds and vicious square waves. It is very cold water all year so you've got about an hour to live if you cant get out. The current can run up to 14 kts but is typically 5 or 6 kts. Back to our little adventure: Usually on these trips downriver we will take a run up the coast at least to Gray's Harbor (Westport). That's about 40 miles up the coast from the Columbia River entrance. But this year, even though conditions were perfect. 15 kts wind, 2 foot waves and 3 foot swells (it just doesn't get better than that), we didn't do it to spend more time doing nothing. We did hire a small boat to take us on a tour around Willapa Bay. I've had a bee up my butt about exploring this huge bay for many a year. But I've never had the balls to come in off of the ocean over the unmarked and unprotected bar. That takes local knowledge. We tried once but it got real hairy so we bailed out. But once inside there are many miles of unpopulated coastline to explore. I have a trailer boat that I can drag up there and I think I will do so next summer. We like places where other people do not go. We had leisurely 3 day run back up-river, again stopping at anchorages, sloughs and such. No rush. Other than that, we enjoyed every minute of our cruise. Nothing broke, nobody got sick or hurt, we met some old and new friends, and we arrived home more rested than when we started. That's a trick you know. Sometimes cruising can be more stressful than staying home. So that's the big cruise for this year. The economy has slowed our little business here and so we have to put in the time to keep it running until the tide turns again. Joe & Debbie Engel Portland, Oregon