Elliott Bay to Port Townsend: planning factors
By Tyler Wilson · September 2026
Seattle's Elliott Bay to Port Townsend is roughly 30 to 35 nautical miles depending on your line, and the trip planning question is mostly a current question: Admiralty Inlet runs hard, and the difference between riding a favorable stage and fighting wind against the ebb near Point Wilson is the difference between an easy run and the roughest water of your month. Time the northern third of the trip first and let the departure fall out of that.
Read this as planning context
This page is deliberately about what to weigh, not where to steer. Routes, hazards, and traffic schemes belong to your charts, the Coast Pilot, and your plotter, and nothing here substitutes for them.
The trip in three parts
| Stretch | What to weigh |
|---|---|
| Elliott Bay and the shipping lanes | Ferry and commercial traffic is constant; plan crossings deliberately and expect wakes near the lanes regardless of the wind forecast |
| The mid-Sound run north | Fetch: a northerly has miles of open water to build over, so the same wind speed reads rougher going north than the marina suggested |
| Admiralty Inlet and Point Wilson | The main event: strong tidal currents, and documented tide rips off Point Wilson that sharpen badly when wind opposes the ebb; time this stretch for slack or a favorable stage |
The current math drives the clock
At displacement speeds the current stage in Admiralty Inlet moves your speed over ground by knots, not decimals, which moves your arrival by the better part of an hour each way. Work backward: pick the stage you want at Point Wilson from the current predictions, subtract the run time at your honest cruise speed, and that is your departure, not the other way around. Then re-check the wind forecast for the hours the math actually puts you out there.
Wind over the ebb is the trap
The classic bad afternoon on this run is a building northerly meeting the ebb at the north end: short, steep, breaking seas exactly where the current is fastest. If the forecast shows wind opposing the ebb during your Admiralty hours, that is not a discomfort note, it is a retime-the-trip note.
Fuel and daylight, honestly
Call it 30 to 35 miles each way, compute hours at your real cruise speed against the current you will actually meet, and carry reserve against the slow case, not the brochure case. In shoulder seasons, check that the slow case still lands in daylight with margin. The fuel arithmetic itself is covered in the fuel reserve guide below.
Sources
- NOAA Coast Pilot (Puget Sound volumes)
- NOAA CO-OPS tide and current predictions
- NWS marine forecasts (Puget Sound zones)
Planning, not navigation
Everything on this page is homework for before you leave the dock. Plan here; navigate on your charts and your plotter. And what the water is actually doing always outranks a forecast, this page included.
TidePilot is a planning advisor, not a navigation system. Always confirm conditions with current observations and use a marine chartplotter for navigation underway.
Where TidePilot comes in
Everything on this page is the homework a TidePilot brief does for your specific boat, route, and crew. Share a start and a destination and the brief comes back with the read at each leg's arrival time, your wind and sea limits applied, and the reasoning shown. The call stays yours. Start a brief.
More guides
- Choosing a departure window
- How wind, swell, tide, and current interact along a route
- What each forecast model tells boaters
- How a TidePilot brief gets made
The read before you leave™. Plan with TidePilot.