The Big Adventure, Day 5: Jones Island to Lopez Island

Day 5 started out awesome!

As I wrote in our last post, we walked around the west coast of Jones Island. The day continued bright and sunny, the skies were impossibly blue.

It looked like this:

Look at that hard sparkling water. I grew up by the ocean, and the constantly shifting sound of the sea is etched into my brain. It's so familiar.

We knew that wind waves tend to get higher as the day goes on, so after using up our leftovers for lunch we untied from our buoy and headed off towards Lopez Island, where we had reservations at the Lopez Islander marina.

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The marina is inside Fisherman's Bay, the approach to which is extremely shallow and also lined with the ruins of boats, which is super nice.

(image via familyyachtclub.com)

The day remained really bright and sunny, but suddenly (it was now about four o'clock) the wind started really picking up. This video doesn't do it justice, but listen to me when I tell you, it was very hard to keep that boat on track.

While we were trying to figure out how to get the boat into the slip in the wind, a seaplane came in to land. We moved into the mooring field to make room for the plane and a sailboat struggling to move upwind, and while we were waiting for the boat to pass, we felt the bump of a mooring buoy on the stern. Only a mooring buoy! But what we didn't know and couldn't see was that the buoy had a crab pot line attached, and what we soon realized was that we were attached pretty firmly to that buoy. Something (the buoy chain, we assumed) had wrapped around our prop and killed one of our engines, and we were facing the wrong direction into the wind with waves lapping over the stern. Things were not looking good.

Luckily there exists a channel we could use to ask for help! A channel that can be heard by anybody with a radio!

GOOD SHIP AISLING: Um, come in? We seem to be caught on a mooring buoy.
MARINA: OMG that sucks. Tell us how it goes.
GOOD SHIP AISLING: Any advice? Over?
MARINA: You should like totally call Vessel Assist.
GOOD SHIP AISLING: OK over
[pause]
GOOD SHIP AISLING: Um, we have no cell phone reception. Could you call Vessel Assist for us?
...
...

        [our huge thanks here to the marina for calling Vessel Assist for us. We really, really appreciate your help. You did an amazing job juggling phone and radio, and you saved us, and we are extremely grateful.]

MARINA: Hello Aisling? Vessel Assist wants you to know that this will be blurbitydurp dollars for a callout and another kudooper dollars if they need to dive.
GOOD SHIP AISLING: 
GOOD SHIP AISLING: OK.
GOOD SHIP AISLING: Aisling out.

But it's okay! Here comes Dane!

 


Dane's so cool!

Before he dives, he neatly lays out his instruments, which he bought used from a surgeon in Sherman's army:




He cuts us free from the CRAB POT OF EVIL!



After we'd said farewell to Dane! and finally docked our girl and walked into that marina, we had a bit of a swagger.

As soon as we sat down, a very nice group of people sent us over drinks to thank us for the show. They had been following it on the radio and providing their own captions as they watched us from the marina bar.

This must be what it's like to be a rock star.