What is this with summer this year? While the news reporters keep talking about
how so much of the country is experiencing its worst drought in decades, the Great
Pacific Northwest gets one day of sunshine and it’s back to rain. Actually, the forecast is for two days of
rain, but then nice weather beginning Tuesday.
We can hardly wait.
Not much to do this morning.
We planned to leave around 11:30 to take Allison and Michael back to
Anacortes. Last night we put the crab
trap down because of all the eelgrass in the bay – crabs love eelgrass. Sure enough, this morning we had four keepers,
so we went about cleaning and cooking them so we could give A and M each a
couple to take home. When the rain let
up a bit, we went ashore to explore one of the many trails on this island, but
it was pretty mucky from all the rain and we didn’t get far. Sure pretty though. Here’s a view from the trail:
Back at the boat, I checked out a few things on the engine
as I do every day and found I needed to add some oil. Darned if I didn’t drop the oil cap into the
bilge. Man, it was hard to keep my
expletives to myself. Fortunately, I
thought, I bought a big magnet for just such an occasion – tie some string to
it, lower it into the space beside the engine and into the depths of the bilge,
piece of cake. Except when I tested the
magnet on the other oil cap, I quickly discovered that it wasn’t magnetic. Who would make such an important piece of the
engine out of plastic?
Plan B: change into
work clothes, nestle into the tiny space between the engine and the bottom of
the boat, have someone hand me the long barbeque tongs, and start
grasping. Voila! Got it on the first try.
With the oil cap retrieved, cleaned, and replaced, we were
on our way. We loved having Allison and
Michael with us on the boat like the old days, but said goodbye and got ready
to leave ourselves. Around the office, a
couple with two grade school girls appeared with a terrible story – they had
just had a boat fire and were rescued by the Coast Guard! Apparently, their boat was just in the shop
for three weeks getting some injector work done, and this was their first day
out on vacation. They had just left when
they heard a BANG and then the engine caught on fire! They put it out with the fire extinguisher, but
the engine wouldn’t shut off and so it kept flaring up again. It made my oil-cap-in-the-bilge experience
seem very trivial. The poor family was all
pretty shell-shocked, the girls were scared, jeeze it was awful.
We considered ourselves lucky (so far, knock wood) and
headed out. By now it was raining again
so we didn’t want to go too far. We
headed across Rosario Strait toward James Island, which is another state park
and right on the outskirts of the San Juans.
The buoys were taken and we didn’t want to anchor there (the currents
are pretty strong), so we went another five minutes and put the anchor down behind
Decatur Head, on the northeast side of Decatur Island. It’s pretty here, except for the rain, and
although we wouldn’t probably return it will do for tonight. One more day of rain and then the weather
forecaster had better be right.
PS After writing the
last paragraph, we decided we had to leave.
A number of people live on Decatur Island, but there are no stores there
and it is not served by the state ferry system.
Instead, a couple of water taxis take people back and forth to the other
islands and towns. One taxi in
particular came and went three or four times in the hour and a half we were
there, and as he sped in and out past us he had no regard for the wake he was
leaving behind. Our boat went rocking,
stuff flew off counters, and he was oblivious.
Since we didn’t know how late he would be operating or how early in the
morning he would begin again, we decided that this wasn’t the place for
us. We pulled anchor and cruised about
30 minutes to Spencer Spit, on Lopez Island.
It was still rainy and crappy, but at least the mighty Elsa stayed
relatively steady. A bit after we
arrived, we were treated to a beautiful display of nature:
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