Once dark, we went to Matt’s boat, they had a better view, and Matt, Robyn and their daughter are cool.

We watched the explosions and hung out there.

The next morning, we made blueberry pancakes.

And then walked into town. Jackson wanted to walk the dock like a balance beam.

Then we went to West Marine, and Jackson wanted to take a nap in a deflated fender.

Then we said our teary good-byes to Matt, Robyn, and their daughter, and we left. We rode off into the proverbial sunset and went our separate ways.

Speaking of sunsets… There were about 70 wildfires in British Columbia causing a constant weird orange haze around everything. The sun looked sort of like an eerie sunset all the time. It was blobbing around in the sky very strangely.

Once in Rocky Bay we met up with my cousin and his wife. And my cousin immediately took Jackson and I out shrimping.

Jackson thought the shrimp were like bugs and therefore loved them.

Then my cousin gave some shrimp to some kids who were rowing around in the bay. (He’s a nice dude.)

Then we barbecued the shrimp.

Jackson was a huge fan of them. He seems to like food better when he is part of the entire preparation process, and if he knows where is food came from. (He got to see pretty much the entire sourcing to killing to cooking cycle here.

And then we went to bed.

The next morning we planned to stay in Rocky Bay and just hang out.

We’ll see what happens next.

Until next time!

The parade was fun, and here’s a quick sample of it.

After that parade, we went shopping for dinner stuff for Matt, Robyn and their daughter (I’m not going to mention their daughter’s name just in case they care).

And then we saw Popeye. The seal that hangs out in Friday Harbor pretty much all the time. Jackson and Lucky were huge fans of Popeye. Jackson took to shouting “Popeye!” at the top of his lungs pretty quickly.

Then we made hamburgers.

And hung out with Popeye more.

Then we waited for the fireworks to begin.

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Once the sails were up it was a really fun and relaxing trip to Friday Harbor. The wind was almost directly behind us and that means that it felt nice and warm, and relatively smooth.

And we were lazy sailing in that we didn’t put back our fenders, because we were going to put them back down again once in Friday Harbor.

It was a nice sail.

And others were having fun sailing too.

It was relaxing enough that Jackson fell asleep. We didn’t want to turn on the motor and wake him up once we got close to Friday Harbor, so we just sailed around more. Thinking that he’d wake up eventually, then we’d turn on the motor and go in.

Suddenly, I realized we were in the Ferry path. And one was headed pretty close to us.

So we tacked and got out of the way.

Minutes later another one was in the distance, looking like it was going to be way away from us. Until it turned right into our direction. I realized I forgot where the Ferry paths were right outside of Friday Harbor. And while we weren’t in its way directly, it whizzed right by us super close and fast.

The views again were awesome.

Once into Friday Harbor, it was a zoo. So many people going in and out, due to the Fourth of July no doubt.

And right when I got into the marina, I noticed a significant tide pull. Like, I felt like something was yanking on the boat towards the shore. We were drifting. Plus the wind was blowing enough to influence our direction.

We had called for help on the dock, but when we got close, we could see no one was there to help.

Luckily our friends from before who had been on our same basic trip path, and had a toddler saw us coming in. Matt yelled to us, “Need help?!”

I shouted, “Oh yea! Thank you!”

He started sprinting down the dock. And hardly made it in time.

But by that time, I realized that I had overshot the slip, I didn’t see the number in time. And the tide was more of an influence than I thought.

After missing the slip, and a fairly harrowing 12 point turnaround I left the marina completely to turn around, and came back. By that time Matt and 3 others were there to help, and they were yelling at me super loud to crank the wheel way before I would have thought.

Against my intuition I cranked the wheel, and we slid in like a rally car sliding around a corner at a mile a minute.

Thank you Matt for saving the day. And my nerves.

Later, we watched boats trying do dock and failing over and over. One took 6 tries before it made it.

You can see how the tide was pulling people sideways (and then backwards once they bounced on the dock) with the video below.

We hung out with Matt, Robyn and their daughter that afternoon and night.

We walked down to meet up with them.

Jackson ran around in Friday Harbor.

And Jackson and their daughter got along super well.

The next morning we hung out too and got some breakfast.

Then Jackson found a dragonfly that was hanging out in the breakfast joint.

Jackson needed to tell that dragonfly that it was bad, and NO!

Then we went to the Friday Harbor Fourth of July Parade.

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