4th of July Vacation Pt 1

This year the 4th of July fell on a Saturday. Cap'n Carey worked only a half day on Thursday, so we could head out early on Friday.
  This year we have some friends that have a sailboat too, Kelly and Dave, they live on the end of our dock, on Shear Water, she is a an Ericson 36 , and she is a beauty.


  We all decided to head inland, and spend the week on the hook in Potato Slough. We are hoping to get a good spot that each of us can get nosed up to the island for protection from the wind. Potato Slough has 3 'bedrooms', which is kind of like a little bay on an island, where boats can anchor and/or tie to the island. There aren't very many islands that you can do this to, so they fill up fast, especially on a holiday weekend. We are on vacation for a week, so we decided to spend a night at Owl Harbor  and wait for the weekend warriors to leave, and then sneak in behind them.

  We all decided to leave early Friday morning. So we all got together Thursday evening, to check charts, weather, and such. We picked the early morning 10:30am tide. The tide will be coming in, which means we will be riding the incoming tide, instead of going against it. There is a cooling trend, which means the wind will be up, so we will sail with only the Genoa, and the NEW FURLER, whoop whoop.  And only pull it out
half way(reef). We also used the whisker pole to hold the sail out the side, to catch air and prevent it from going back and forth.
  We had the wind at our backs, and rode the tide all the way up.
  We planned to stay at  Owl Harbor Friday night, and head to Potato Slough Saturday, early afternoon. The cool front stayed an extra day, , , , so we did too.

  When we woke up Saturday morning, the wind was rippin, and the coast guard was having a pretty rough day of pulling boats off the rock levees, and we decided that we didn't want to be them.
  It turned into a fun time, once we knew we weren't going anywhere, we just goofed off. Dave and Kelly had inflatable paddle boards, and we took a turn on them, Roxi and Drifter had fun on them too. A friend of theirs, Leslie, came and spent the 4th with us. We watched the fireworks from the levee.  We saw a bunch of little fireworks all around us, and spent the evening hours chatting about all the adventures in our lives, our dreams, our obstacles, and the fun we are having making them all.
   bunkmate