I’m probably not the first person in the world to say this, but I never thought I would be a 40 year old. I don’t feel old, or like a person that I picture a 40 year old to be. What ever, just thought I’d start this post off that way.
As you can probably guess by now, I just recently turned 40 years old. As recently as 3 days ago on July 4th in fact. Having a birthday on the fourth of July has provided me with (to date) 39 really fun birthdays. I say 39 instead of 40 because on the day before my 20th birthday I bit through my tongue and had to get 6 stiches (IN my freakin tongue). Needless to say, the next day and many days after…really sucked.
This year however did not.
Both me and Tawn had to work on saturday, but that gave us sunday, monday, tuesday & wednesday off. So we loaded up the boat with food and booze and took off in search of fun and adventure.
As usual, you can follow the trip here via this crappy little map.
Saturday evening found us tied up behind our old friends (Scott and Angie) on Ghost, on the west side of Blake Island. We had a great fire on the beach and made s’mores…oh and some beer. Getting tied up to the mooring as we first arrived ended up with a slighting miscalculation on the amount of current on my part which resulted in our boat hitting Ghost. The damage was minor on both boats. Nothing a little sanding of the teak won’t fix. And as Scotty said “Luckily you hit a friend and not some random asshole”. Whether or not he really meant it, it made me feel better at the time. :) Thanks Scotty!
It still sucks to flub up a landing like that, but moving that slow in current in a full keeled boat can get tricky. This time I missed, but I did learn from it.
We left Blake island the next morning (Sunday, July 1st) and headed to Manzanita Bay on Bainbridge Island. There was absolutly no wind, so we motored the entire way there. Once there we did AB-SOLUT-LY nothing, which on occasion is one of my favorite things todo. Especially at anchor. I did take a dinghy ride up a small river as far as I could after a power nap in the hammock. But other than that, nothing.
The next morning (Monday, July 2nd) we got up and headed for Liberty Bay to meet up with Scott and Angie on Ghost. The wind was up and we sailed all the way to the raft up…..almost. Dave and Rhonda 0n Scepter were there and rafted up. So we tied off to them. The wind continued to build and after a small anchor dragging, we decided it would be prudent to set out a second anchor. Liberty Bay is a large bay, but on the 3rd of july it fills up and there is little room to move. So we dropped our anchor to give ourselves a little piece of mind.
Poulsbo is a small town that sets at the head of Liberty Bay. Every year on the 3rd of July they put on a fireworks show. Which is why we and about 200 other boats ended up there all at once. We spent the next 2 days hanging out and meeting up with our boating friends or just eating and drinking and watching the fireworks on the 3rd. I also got a very cool telescope from the crew of Ghost for my B-day, with our boat name engraved on the side. Very cool, every pirate ship needs one of these.
My buddy Dan showed up on his boat, the Blue Monkey II, later on the 3rd and another friend Mike showed up on his boat and they both tied up to our raft and the party was officially on. After the fireworks we stayed up late into the night drinking and singing, complete with guitar and harmonica accompaniment. None of which was really any good, but we were told, that what it lacked in quality, we more that made up for in loudness. Oh well, it sounded good to us at the time.
Wednesday brought with it abit of a hangover and a wake up call that was earlier than we really wanted but everyone wanted to get get back to Seattle fairly early. Ghost and Scepter broke of the raft up first and headed for home. After some coffee on shore, we cast Mike and Dan adrift we head for home ourselves. We motored all the way through Agate Passage until we go into Port Madison, but after bobbing around with no wind we motored out until we were out into the wind and had an awesome sail the rest of the way home.
Tawn had to run an errand (pick up Cheese cake for my bday party), so me and Dan jumped in the dinghy and headed through the locks and on in to Lake Union, grabbing more beer along the way, so we could meet up with Tawn at our friends Rich and Echo’s new boat for a fourth of July BBQ….and cheese cake. :)
The fireworks were awesome! A bunch of friends showed up. Rich and Echo’s new boat is awesome and I got some pretty cool gifts from Rich and Echo and Dave and Rhonda.
All in all a great bday weekend.