Thursday, August 30 - Friday Harbor

Yesterday in La Conner, Erin picked up a bottle of marionberry syrup, and this morning we were plugged into shore power.  That’s a recipe for waffles!  Erin dug out the waffle iron while I walked up to town to get some blueberries.  I was elected for that chore after mentioning blueberry waffles would be nice.  Upon my return, Ray mixed up some batter and made the first waffle, which, as is often the case, was a trial run.  But, the second and subsequent waffles were great.  The waffles take a little time, so Ray fixed himself a couple of pancakes garnished with peanut butter and eggs while minding the waffle iron.

After breakfast we went up to the office to see about staying another night.  They had put us on the breakwater dock in a reserved spot last night, and that space had other takers for tonight.  There were no slips available for our size, but they put us on the waiting list, and our check-out time wasn’t until 1:00 pm.  I had monkeyed around testing the batteries as best I could and decided that the two banks were at least equally powered – good or bad.  By shutting off the shore power and putting a load on the batteries one bank at a time through the inverter I could see that they held their voltage while using 50 amps or so, so at least they weren’t totally out of kilter.  Of course, I didn’t run this test for long, as I would then need to recharge them again.

We developed a plan that if our checkout time arrived before a slip became available, we would just cruise on up to Ganges in the Gulf Islands.  That would be about 4 hours away.  There are two marinas plus a government dock there, and if we had to anchor I think we’d be okay with that as well as long as we turned off our ice maker completely for the night.  We usually just put the bar up that prevents it from making new cubes – in that mode it draws lots of power as it’s working to put out another batch of cubes every 20 minutes or so.  With the bar up it just cycles enough to keep the existing ice cold.  But, having other things working the next morning definitely trumps having a bin full of ice!

I also fiddled with the GPS last night.  The Furuno needed a new 1 amp fuse in the line.  The gum wrapper that was wrapped around the old fuse was worn out! J  (Nope, I didn’t put it there, it apparently came that way.)  The Garmin also eventually came back to life after removing and replacing the batteries two or three times.  I think I’ll pick up one of those hockey puck GPS units that plug into the computer’s usb port – no separate power supply issues there!

We had an otherwise leisurely day in port, and around 12:30 one of the marina staff came around and gave us a slip assignment on the F dock, so we had a grand cruise from one side of the marina to the other – didn’t even have to move the fenders or lines.

Erin and I walked the dock in the afternoon, and came across the sailboat Desert Sky.  We had met them on our trip to Alaska 9 years ago and toured their boat.  There was no one on board at the time so we don’t even know if it has the same owners now.

Dinner tonight was the marinated flank steak that I prepared last weekend before we left home.  I set up the barbecue on the walkway outside the starboard side door, as with most of the windows in the top it wouldn’t be a good idea to barbecue in the usual spot on the bridge.  The flank steak was delicious – we all ate too much.  Tonight we’ll watch a movie on DVD – maybe Cowboys & Aliens.

Our plan is to leave in the morning and head to Ganges.  It’s just a couple hours of leisurely cruising to Bedwell for customs, then another couple hours to Ganges.