<<Written by Rachel>>

Last weekend was as crazy as we thought it would be. Thankfully, everything went more-or-less according to plan and we didn’t have any mishaps. My mother-in-law took the kids on Friday night and I was able to spend several hours packing up the kids’ room.

It started out as this disaster….

By the end of the night, I was proud to have everything ready to pack out.

We spent all day Saturday moving everything off the boat and into my father-in-law’s house. It was very strange to try to get everything that we might need for a several weeks’ stay off the boat.

Then, before we knew it, Sunday arrived and we had to make final preparations and stage a car at the boatyard in order to have a ride back home afterward. We planned to leave the marina at about noon, but everything always takes longer than planned and we didn’t actually get to leave until about 1:45.

We had the kids with us. We wanted them to get to experience the trip on the river. Our buddy Brian also came along and was a big help and we all got some great photos!

The first part of our trip involved two bridge openings. This was exciting and a bit nerve-wracking as we have never had to request a bridge open for us previously.

After the excitement of the bridges, we were able to settle into the trip and travel downriver on the Columbia from the two bridges to the turn at Kelley Point, head up the Willamette River just a bit to turn into the Multnomah Channel.

Here are a few more random photos from this portion of the trip:

In the final leg of the trip, we had to pass under the fixed span of the Sauvie Island Bridge. This was the scariest part of the trip as we were pretty nervous about the height of the bridge in relation to the height of our mast! The water level on the bridge was reading about 68-feet and the top of our mast is about 63-feet from the water.

The approach

The “WE MADE IT AND THE MAST IS STILL INTACT” face

I took a video of our view while going under this bridge. I’ve been trying to get that onto one of the computers to get posted on our Facebook page and so that I could get it into this blog. I’m having troubles so far but will continue trying. If I can get it, I’ll get back in and edit this post and put it in!

We also really enjoyed all the beautiful floating homes along the Multnomah Channel. There were high dollar homes, quirky little homes, and a mix of dilapidated or abandoned homes so it was a really neat adventure. We even came across a sunken motorboat!

As twilight approached, we safely docked Mosaic at the boatyard, directly in front of the launch. The following morning we had our appointment to get the mast removed via crane and then the travel lift would lift her out of the water and set her safely on dry ground for the coming weeks.

Check back soon for our next blog post about our haul out. Evan even got to skip school to be there for the big event!

As always, thanks for reading. We hope you’ll follow along on our Facebook page for more pictures and up to date information. Cheers!  ~Rachel