Memorial Day Part 3

Sunday!

Our friends were able to get out of their marina and we had our first raft up of the season (and for this boat). It was still a little hairy getting into Fairlee Creek. Even boats inside the channel found bottom:

This sailboat got beached inside the channel which was abnormally shallow.

This boat was nice enough to try to tow the boat out of its predicament.

Of course, there was a crowd on shore watching the whole thing. We were part of the group watching from Jellyfish Joel's.

 

These helpers tried tying a line to the top of the mast to rock the sailboat out.

He did finally come lose. He then chose to turn around and leave Fairlee Creek.

Luckily we all had a safe trip and a fantastic time. Our helm became quite the gathering spot, especially for the pot luck dinner Sunday night - I was too interested in eating to get a picture - sorry. Just trust me, there were shrimp and beef kebobs, quinoa and black bean salad, and a green salad - and tons of food! Pot lucks are a great idea when you are rafting up with a group. Everyone only needs to find space for a small amount of ingredients. It brings everyone together. And everyone leaves stuffed.

We witnessed an amazing moon Sunday evening:

It was time to raise the anchors on Monday. We were the last boat to move and we knew our stern anchor was in tight from Saturday's wind. Doug attached a bunch of lines to the stern anchor line so we could pull the bow line before using the weight of the boat to pull the stern line. The bow line came up with no issue - the stern line was a whole other issue. We had a similar situation in the aftermath of the derecho last year. While I don't have pictures this time, you can get an idea of how we got the stern anchor up here. It took about 20 minutes and we think we may have been hooked on a tree stump but at last we were free. Many thanks to James, Sandra, Jerry, and Dawn who were also the last boats to leave and stuck around to make sure we were successful in our anchor retrieval.

After that it was an uneventful ride home and return to dock.