Unstable

The picture is of Victoria Harbour as we were departing.

The title is not meant to be a comment on my mental state, though it might fit.  Dylan (that's the correct spelling of his name), the crew from the neighboring boat, came through and cleared away the kelp that had become entangled in my stabilizer and secondary prop.  But the damage was done.  My starboard stabilizer is inoperative.  More annoyingly, it is stuck canted out at about a 45-degree angle.  This makes for an interesting mostly unstable, slow ride.  This cut our speed down from 7.5 knots to 5.5 knots.  Tyler from S3 Maritime, the Wesmar Stabilizer repair group, wont' be able to get to it until we are back in Anacortes next week.  So, we will limp along until then.

The second issue was this big ship, the "Great Pioneer".  He was overtaking and I wanted to stay out of his way, even though in the open water, I was the stand-on vessel.  Using the Law of Rivets (he had a lot more, so I don't argue, I just get out of the way).  I hailed him on the VHF (Ch 13 & 16) and he would not respond.  I turned away and slowed to bare steerage (about 3.1knots) and he turned right at me.  I had to take evasive maneuvers.  And still, he did not respond to repeated VHF hails.  I suspect that the ship was on autopilot and the watch had taken off for something.  Regardless, this was an unnecessarily dangerous situation.

The weather really turned warm, windless, and waveless out in the middle of the confluence of the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Admiralty Inlet.

We don't often see seas this glassy.

We rounded this channel marker, replete with the prerequisite sea lions just outside of Port Townsend.

We pulled into Point Hudson Marina and right into our slip.  Almost looked like pros!

Here are a few pictures of this pretty little harbor, dominated by sailboats.  We are one of two powerboats in the marina at the moment.

We were to have drinks & dinner with friends, but things happened, and they cancelled.  Karen & I ate the appetizers for diner, so all was good.

This dish is roasted tomatoes in garlic over savory whipped feta cheese.  It's sort-of a version of a bruschetta, and very tasty!

Which brings us to the third thing for today.  This wine was recommended by an unnamed acquaintance.  He said it was an outstanding wine and a total bargain at $11CAD.  So, I bought one.  We opened it tonight and it was just foul.  Syrupy sweet, overly ripe fruit, grapey, and undeveloped.  We dumped it and moved on to a different bottle.   Pendragon may be fine for some people, but it didn't suit my taste buds.

After dinner we hiked around town, looked at the sunset and stopped for dessert at Nick's Grotto.

Port Townsend is a really cool community.   It feels very wholesome and embracing.   There are interesting shops and eateries all over.   Tonight was the Port Townsend Film Festival, where the closed a downtown block, put up a very large projection screen and showed movies.   People bring chairs, tents, tables, etc. and hang out watching old movies together.  How cool is that???

More sunset pictures.   This one has Mt Rainier in the background.

And lastly, the moonrise; our one and only moon, though I understand we are to have a second moon for a few weeks in late October - early November as Earth's gravity captures a small asteroid for a bit before it flies off to wherever.

I think I read some sci-fi books that started with this premise and ended up with the annihilation of our planet...

On that happy note.   Good Night!