Day 347 Weenie Roast

The weather man proved to be his same accurate self yesterday. Very few winds and some on again, off again Sun.

I walked to the opposite side of Stuart Island and found a VERY weak internet and cell service signal so I could post yesterdays blog. With luck, I'll get to do it again today. If you get to read this on Saturday, I was successful. It took almost an hour to get it posted and our emails checked plus visit a few websites that I look at each day. A long drawn out process but I got it done.

Once I got back to Zephyr, we moved her out to one of the "floats" in the middle of the Reid Harbor. It's actually a floating dock to tie up to so you can sit at tables and work on projects without taking up the valuable space on the shore dock. With the tide going out and it hitting much lower than when we arrived, I though we would end up hitting the bottom of the harbor if we stayed there plus it is to get even lower over the next day or so. We untied and moved out. Once there, we launched "Puff" the dingy so we could get to shore when we wanted to.

With the weather being decent, we decided to row ashore and have a weenie roast for lunch. We collected the necessary ingredience that we needed. Hot dogs and mustard and drinks--plus plenty of paper to help get the fire started and off we went. It took a while to get it started(some wet wood) but once we got her going, she was a nice fire. One thing we forgot to bring with us on this trip was a hatchet to cut fire wood and some tongs to hold the hotdogs as they roasted. They're now on our list of things to get once we are back in civilization. Luckily, Rich and Judy, who we had met the day before had left some wood that they had collected and cut for their fire so we used it. The Washington State Parks provides lots of tables and fire pits and as we were just about the only people there, we had lots to choose from. As is the problem when cooking hotdogs on sticks, they tend to get hot and burn if left over the fire for any amount of time and Tracy and I both lost a hot dog to the fire. Oops! I braved the heat and got mine back--tended to melt the plastic fork I used but I got it back at least. Tracy's was too far in to recover safely. I only lost a few hairs on the back of my hand. A small price to pay for a good hotdog.

We had several folks stop by. One, a pair of sailers who walked by and never said a word to us. Seemed strange as we said hello to them. We watched later as they dingied back to their boat. They had anchored in Prevost Harbor on the other side of the island. Another boat tied up at the dock we had left earlier and he just walked past as we were breaking down the fire later in the day with a bare shake of the head to acknowledge us. Two commercial fishermen stopped by. They were having problems with their crab pots. Someone was playing with them so they couldn't catch crabs. There is a small gate on the outside of the pot that the crabs will walk through to get at the bait and then get "stuck" inside as the gate closes. Someone was pulling up their pots and reversing the gate so crabs could get out but not in thereby making their pots useless. All twelve of thier post were tinkered with. They'd set up a motion activated camera on shore to see if they could get any pictures of who might be doing it but so far no luck. This is how these guys make a living so someone was not playing nice. It's hard enough on the fishermen out here with all the restrictions they have placed on them let alone to mess with their traps.

Once we put out the fire and headed back, I started work on fixing and adding some handles to "Puff". There are small bungie cord straps on the stern to hold the oar blades in place so they don't fall off but both had broken, so I replace them. I also added some plastic handles to one side. I'd love to show you some pictures but heaven only knows how long that would take to upload and the program I'm using to write this blog for posting later(I'm inside Zephyr) when I'm on line doesn't allow me to add pictures.

I'd fired up the generator earlier in the day to charge the batteries and make hot water for showers so we had a great day of not only being clean for a change but with our batteries all topped up which makes Zephyr a happy girl. Her systems run much better with a full charge. I have to run the generator just about once a day since the Webasto cabin heater uses between 8 and 9 amps to run and a warm cabin is a happy cabin especially if it happens to get cloudy. With the Sun, the cabin heats up nicely. Without it, it needs some help.

I finished working on the dingy by late in the afternoon just as another sailboat motored into the bay and tied up to one of the buoys for the night. Being Easter weekend we'll see how many folks show up. Being at Stuart Island, we are about as far out in the San Juan Islands as you can get. They used their dingy to motor ashore to sign in at the State Parks box for their night stay. As I was finishing up I suddenly heard this "crunch crunch" sound from under the dock. Apparently one of the resident otters had come by to have his dinner and was chomping away on some clams he collected. After about ten minutes he was off without a sound or a ripple. Never did see him. As it was cloudy and threatening to sprinkle, I went below for a nice quiet evening with Tracy. She was cooking "Chicken Bruchetta" for dinner. It may be a small galley but she does great in it.