Day 443 Another windy & foggy day in Watmough Bay

Another windy and foggy day here in Watmough Bay.  The other sailboats upped their anchors and took off at different times.  Two had come into Watmough just to escape the fog and dropped their anchors for a while.

The sailboat that was here yesterday when we pulled in had dropped two anchors.  A bit of over kill if you ask me, but hey, it's their boat.  They paid for it when they tried to leave.  The bottom here is covered in seaweed and both their anchors came up completely covered.  It took them well over an hour to get both up and get underway.  They had to motor over to the first one, pull up the line by hand.  The anchors were well set as we have had winds here into the 20 knot range and that will drive you anchors in deep.  Once up, they worked at getting the seaweed off(no boat hook) and then had to go after the second anchor.  After that, they had to stow all the line that was attached to the anchors.  What a pain!!

We laid the ground work with phone calls today about being in Port Townsend.   I called and ordered a replacement CO2 cartridge for my life jacket.  It had gone bad while on the trip.  The fitting wasn't engaging properly so it would never had inflated had an emergency arose.  We ordered in some paint for the bottom and made connection to rent the equipment to sand down the bottom.  We also confirmed our haul out date and time with the Port Townsend Boat Yard.  Brion Toss is ordering in some new sheaves for the mast head on Zephyr.  We still can't get the mainsail up to the top without putting the line in the biggest winch we have and cranking away.  It isn't supposed to be that difficult.  When Brion replaced the mast head unit, I noticed that one of the sheaves didn't turn easily.  He assured me that under load, it would turn fine.  I guess not.  Now he can go up the mast and fix it.

We still need to find a diesel fuel polisher to pump out zephyrs tanks and get them cleaned out.  We don't want to have the same problem with the fuel we had at Shearwater.  I feel sure that the tanks have never been cleaned in all their 27 years of use so it is well past time and the prudent thing to do before we set off.  I should have done it earlier but I got stingy with the outlay of money and didn't We nearly paid for it when the engine died going through a set of rapids.

I stitched up some torn leather on the dodger while Tracy stitched some cross stitch.  The kids sat and slept just about all day.  The fog didn't clear until late in the afternoon but the winds just kept on blowing.  The DuoGen was a happy camper just spinning away.  With the Honda Generator broken, we have gone into the conservation mode but still needed to run Zephyrs engine for a while to get the batteries recharged this morning from yesterday and last nights use.  Depending on the winds tomorrow, either the engine or the DuoGen in water mode will have to get them back up to snuff though it's no big thing as we expect to be in the marina tomorrow night for a change and can charge them there.

Well, tomorrow, we will finally be back where we started.  Three months and 12 days since we started this journey.  The next starts in late August.

Stay tuned.