Day 31 - Friendships are the best ships
I should clarify that the story from July 1st was from the year 2021. No drama to Ciara, no damage, all is well. I had a few people ask, so my non-existent editing is showing that I wasn’t clear enough.
Today started pretty routine. Beautiful morning. Log time. Kona walk. Cory made breakfast burritos. The sun was already beating down on us mid-morning when we weighed anchor. I’m feeling more confident on the captaining of this maneuver and we left all under my command. The wind was directly on our nose so we delayed putting up our sails until we were clear of the Strawberry Shoals which is a pretty narrow cut between the mainland and a bunch of bird islands. There was another sailboat ahead of us so as soon as we cleared the shoals it was race time. I relinquished the wheel to captain and took over handling the lines for him. We have a nice sail and the wind was constant and a nice relief from the heat. The wind did die off about an hour so we lowered the sails and motored the remaining 45 minutes to Egg Harbor.
Coming into Egg Harbor we could see three sailboats at the beach and three in the “hole” near the marina where we like to drop. This is a LOT of sailboats at any given time and the signs of the big holiday weekend were abundant. As we approached the hole to see if there was space for us we saw our friends on Belafonte and Dreamweaver were two of the boats in there! They were kind enough to leave us one spot for us to drop our hook. We blew the conch as we did a fly by and soon enough were secure at anchor.
Our friends came over and we spent the day socializing, playing music and swimming. Kona girl scratched the heck out of Captain Ryan while swimming together their dog, Dory. The water here is nice and comfy and with the hot air the combination was perfect. Even Captain swam for a while. The kids were doing well entertaining themselves and I encouraged them to take the dinghy by themselves to shore to go on an ice cream hunt. They had no issues with this plan! We had a squall come over around 3pm. It came on super hard and the waves built out of nowhere. But like any good squall, it came on us fast and left us fast, leaving cooler air behind. At some point Captain Ryan from Belafonte climbed our mast, something he has done a lot but always has Captain and I holding our breath. Even Kona couldn’t peel her eyes off him way up there.
The kids wanted Salisbury Steak for dinner so we put off tacos another night. The Alpine resort off shore was having a wedding and there was a live New Orleans Jazz band playing. I played Last Post at 8:58 and then after a moment of silence Taps. We are working on the math to have Taps played at 9. It’s a little detail. However, I should have just waited until 9 as the band stopped at nine and I was playing over them which is very hard to concentrate. (The band was over a half mile away; I wasn’t disturbing the wedding party by any means and I played down wind away from them). Tomorrow I would be smart to wait until right at 9pm but with the fireworks I suspect the bands will be none stop. The bay will fill tomorrow and it will be a zoo.
After Taps we took the kids and Kona to shore. We decided to pirate some shore power to our lithium pack as even with all our solar they can’t keep up with full time ice making. The kids baby sat the power packs while we went to chat with Quiet Time IV who was secured to the wall. We used to be slip neighbors with Quiet Time IV in Sturgeon Bay. We also called George “Smiley George” as he always had a big smile on his face. We never really got to get to know them much over the years but tonight the stars aligned and they welcomed us aboard for social time with their friends. We had a grand time. The highlight was the Himalayan salt carved shot glasses that we had margarita shots out of. How fun and bougie!
The night quickly turned to early morning and I think we said our good nights around 1:30am. I take the time now to remind myself that when there is a boring day where I am going nuts to enjoy the down time, the excitement is just around the corner. Tomorrow will also be crazy fast and fun and full of friends old and new! As much as I like our quiet alone time, I truly love all our friends we have met along the way and the time we spend together.
