Last weekend I took a trip I’ve been wanting to do for a while. I sailed from near the Portland Airport down the Columbia, and then up the Willamette River to downtown Portland. It was Fleet Week and the Rose Festival so it seemed like a great time to be in the city. I spent the night on a dock right in front of the Marriott and across from OMSI, a great place to take in all the activities of the city.
This trip involved needing to request several of the bridges in Portland to lift to allow me under so my mast would clear. That was a learning experience and also a bit challenging with Fleet Week going on and all of the extra security provided by the Coast Guard. For the most part it worked out well, but the trip home was challenging. The Coast Guard was escorting all boat traffic through downtown near the big ships. And trying to time this along with when bridges could be lifted when there wasn’t railroad traffic going on turned out to be quite the headache. It took almost 3 hours to get through Portland, and finally a coast guard boat who had been listening to the difficulties came over and took pity on me. He pulled up and told me to follow him and that he was going to personally escort me through the bridges since going with the flotilla wasn’t working out. Very kind of him to give me my own personal escort through town and it meant a nice up close view of all the military vessels along the way.
An awesome weekend and a neat way to see downtown and the Rose Festival for sure!
