Throwback Time!
Frankly, this week was a little underwhelming. I even postponed the newsletter a couple of days hoping something exciting would happen. Here’s a brief recap:
Gale force winds kept us from leaving the San Diego Yacht Club as planned. We provisioned to leave the docks for a few weeks, but the wind angered the seas, and our Catalina plan was put back on hold.
The coast guard paperwork may be done soon, and with a special visitor planned (Aunt Scootie), we looked to hunker down in San Diego a while longer. It took a few days on the phone with every marina in town but we finally lucked out and found a slip. They were very gracious and allowed us a short term liveaboard contract.
We went to a birthday party! Shoutout to S/V Space Cowboy for inviting us and making us feel like we have local friends. We had a bunch of fun dinners with Chuck & Kitsy. I played golf with Dave, and Taylor hung out with our friends, Max & Matt Jones who were visiting from SF. Despite being pinned down, we had a ton of fun.
Anyway, in lieu of a more fascinating update, here’s a throwback tale to another pinned-down-by-wind story.
Last summer, post-decision not to go South, we spent some time touring the San Juan Islands. This was Tay and my first time cruising just the two of us after Hannah and Joe returned to land.
We bit off more than we could chew one day. Passing between two narrow islands with a significant current rushing between them, we had full sails up, a fishing rod in the water, and while Taylor helmed I had an entire disassembled outboard sprawled about the cockpit. We hooked a fish, and chaos ensued. We traded off reeling and steering and trying to wrangle the sails, while every nut and bolt from the outboard tried to get lost.
It was a good marriage exercise while we yelled at each other trying to survive. The boat got close to the rocks on shore then close to the passing ferry, then close to the various sailboats, then back to the shore. Tay landed the whopper of a Salmon, and a flopping fish in the spare motor parts added another tier to our chaos cake.
We got the sails down, bonked the fish, stashed it in the cooler, and got the outboard cleaned up. We sailed into Friday Harbor as we calmed down and apologized to each other. As we rolled in, the sky on one side was violently dark while the other was clear blue. We got into a slip right as the wall hit. In the days pre-dodger, we had to set up a tarp over the cockpit.
The storm lasted 4 days which took a big hit out of our budget, Friday Harbor was one of the most expensive marinas at the time. But we were content. We watched all 5 Pirates of the Caribbean movies, ate ungodly amounts of salmon, and sat in the rain.
Knock on wood we get pinned down in places this amazing from here on out.