We went out for a sail. It was another beautiful day for sailing, with about 12 knot winds and waves just starting to whitecap. The sun was out, but not blazing hot. There were far more sailboats out than power boats, with a few kayaks and kiteboarders out too. Our normal crew had the children replaced by a co-worker of Sandi's.
While tacking up the lake, we saw down by the 520 bridge a very large schooner, with two masts and four sails. We decided to go check it out, so started running down the lake, wing and wing, trying to catch it. It sailed over toward Kirkland, tacked, and then headed back toward the 520 bridge, we guessed back to Lake Union. It was going about twice as fast as us, so we gave up trying to catch it.
After getting home, we figured out what we were looking at. It was the schooner Zodiac, which has her home port in Bellingham. This is a 160 foot sailing ship, built in 1924 for the Johnson and Johnson brothers, of Band Aid fame. They sold it just before the stock market crashed. It eventually wound up as a pilot ship in San Francisco until 1972, ferrying the pilots for San Francisco bay out to the large ships. By 1974, it moved to Washington State.
