June 18, 2017: A quiet day at the dock

Finding ourselves suffering from some fatigue following many frantic days of preparing for our summer excursions and planning for the Moody owners’ meet-up, Walt and I decided to take a “day off!” We slept until about 9:30 am and found the Ft. Flagler dock area wrapped in soft gray mist. Walt made sure that Pellucidar and Chantey V were safely away (Heron had departed earlier in the morning), and then we spent a cool, quiet morning doing a little more clean-up, reading, and planning our travels for the upcoming two weeks using maps, charts, cruising guides, Facebook chat with a friend, and weather forecasts.

After a lunch of “avocado dogs” that used up some party left-overs and some time spent catching up on email, Walt enjoyed a nap and I decided to walk up to the grassy campground to buy some soft ice cream at the small store in which the kind woman at the cash register had treated me to a free sample cone. I found her JUST closing for the day, and so we chatted about various things and she mentioned that her husband charters their sailboat, so I told her about our plans to visit a charter agency this week to learn more about chartering Braesail next summer. I encouraged her to investigate chartering with an agency, since her husband would like to back away from his personal chartering work and they need some income to supplement their Social Security benefits. Since she had recently shut off the soft ice cream maker, she suggested that I choose an ice cream bar, and when I found that I didn’t have $3.50 to pay for it (I was attempting to rid myself of unneeded change and had brought only a little more than enough money to pay $2.50 for a cone), she simply accepted the change I DID have and thanked me for the suggestion of contacting a boat chartering agency. I hope something positive will work out for the lady and her husband!

I spent nearly an hour walking beneath a thick iron-gray sky, first up the road leading away from the campground and then along a trail that wandered through a fragrant, rain-washed forest of towering cedars and firs, salal, thimble berry and salmon berry bushes, and huge sword ferns, some of them nearly five feet tall. Crystal beads of rain quivered on leaves, many trees wore fluffy moss skirts, and bird calls wreathed the tree branches high above me. Upon my return to the shore, I made my way over the beach, thickly strewn with gravel and shells, to the muddy edge of the water to see how it felt; it wasn’t as cold as I’d expected! I found a large scallop shell filled with rain water that looked like a miniature bird bath–lovely!

Back on the boat, I banished the sand and mud that had followed my feet from the beach; Walt prepared a tasty jambalaya that used up the grilled shrimp and sausage left over from the previous evening’s festivities, and, following kitchen clean-up, I settled down to blog post writing in the company of an interesting “Sunday sundae” consisting of very soft, pudding-like vanilla-caramel-swirl ice cream topped with strawberry jam. Tomorrow morning we plan to leave for Jones Island to the north after a most memorable weekend of camaraderie, conviviality, conversation, and the consumption of creatively constructed comestibles!