Rain in the morning and wind. We were concerned about getting out of our slip against the wind and current in the morning and asked the marina about staying until slack tide and they were very nice. They reached out to the people coming into our slip and found out they would not be arriving until 2 pm and allowed us to stay.
We spent the morning doing a load of laundry. This took a little longer because the people in front of me used both washers even though the sign clearly says to please use one even if you have more than one load so that someone else can use the other. They did that with two people waiting. The husband felt bad and was very prompt with the changeovers.
At the end of our laundry session, a woman came in with a huge bin of laundry. At that point I was drying as was the person after me. She asked if we either of us were waiting and then used only one of the washers, leaving the other free even though no one was waiting. My faith was restored.
We returned our Tesla and headed back toward the marina.
We decided to walk through the farmer’s market. Despite the rain and wind of the morning, vendors went all out. There were clothes tents, linens, pottery, so many plants, spices, mushrooms, musicians. At the end were the food trucks. Fruit popsicles were popular as were dye free snow cones. There was a whole block of orchids.
We bought some mango salsa from a vendor that had 5 bins of ice. The first one had pints and half pints of ceviche that was the hot item. The subsequent bins had pico de gallo, the mango salsa, tomatillo sauce and some cheese sauce. The vendor included a zip loc bag of chips in case some were needed. We also opted to share a surf and turf burrito from one of the food trucks. Delicious!
The dockhand helped us leave the dock. We backed the boat off and he helped push our bow. David was able to get us turned upwind in the small space and we headed to anchor a little south of the marina, opposite the public docks. We ended up near a monohull, Tumbleweed. A catamaran was behind us. We anchored at slack tide which is nice because you can see where everyone’s anchor is relative to their boat without the current effect.
Our new friend Trevor had planned a little gathering on his boat and dinner ashore but we were too nervous to leave the boat and later we rescheduled for another night. We did well with the current against wind session of the tide cycle until about an hour before the tide change when the catamaran behind us started sailing towards us. We had to push off. They then nearly collided with another cat. We pulled anchor and at slack tide, reanchored at a greater distance from them. We turned with the tide change and felt very safe for the next 6 hours with wind and current together. We ate dinner and slept, setting our alarms for the next tide change. We decided to take watch once the current changed.
We did well for the first few hours and then the cat started dancing again. It was about one and a half hours before the tide change when David had to intervene again. Something on our bow did hit their rear stanchion. David got an abrasion on his forearm but managed to keep us from colliding badly. We all swung back and a few minutes later, the same thing. They came up toward us, we avoided them with motor this time, then they swung over and almost collided with another cat, then swung back to safety. This dance became predictable enough that we were able to pull up our anchor in between their wild rides and get out of there. We motored up and down the channel for about an hour before light and tide change. We are between two bridges and did not really want to go anywhere in the dark. We then reanchored at first light on the other side of the channel. A few other boats were doing similar things.
David is physically fine, his arm will heal. We are tired, a little traumatized, but feel lucky again and remain vigilant. Learning a lot. Josie may be allergic to cats.