Welcome aboard!

While Walt was preaching and presiding over worship in the Episcopal church in Marysville, I was giving tours of Braesail to AYC staff members and other boat owners and anyone else who stopped by and seemed interested. A long-time friend, who owns and operates the outstanding Friday Harbor Grand B&B, came by with a vegetable frittata and some banana-nut pancakes accompanied by a little jar of maple syrup, and a Mothers’ Day rainbow bouquet of fresh flowers from his garden! Braesail and I received a lot of visitors, and, I hope showed them a fine time and answered most of their questions about the boat.

Walt arrived on the 3:45 pm ferry from Anacortes, to which he’d driven after his church service was over, and as he was walking from the ferry dock to the boat, a large powerboat cruised by on our port side and slightly grazed Braesail’s hull. I was in the cockpit facing in the opposite direction, and felt a sudden thump, so got up to see the passing boat looking for a docking space on the breakwater ahead. As I was leaning over the side of the boat to see if there was any serious damage (there wasn’t), the skipper of the passing boat called out to me, asking for some help with his dock lines, which I provided as best I could. He and Walt talked about the “close scrape,” and decided that there was nothing that needed to be done about it–the small scratches could be buffed out relatively easily.

Braesail and her crew were soon heading back to Anacortes at an excellent speed of a little over 10 kts., thanks to a 5-knot current flowing in our homeward direction. By about 6:30, the boat was back in her slip in the Anacortes Marina after a wonderful weekend, and Walt and I were looking ahead to our departure for a seven-week circumnavigation of Vancouver Island to begin on May 19.