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Melissa & Dave - Adventures at Sea

Two buoy assists in two days

On Tuesday we made our way to Deer Harbor after dropping Jamie, Melissa, and Aveaha off at Friday Harbor.  However, a few hours made clear that Deer Harbor had zero cell phone reception, and worse, no WiFi connectivity.  So we moved to EastSound onto a mooring buoy in front of Rosario Resort.  Since Dave's 51st birthday is tomorrow, we figured we would hang here for a few days and enjoy the resort.

The first day we were here we watched another power boat trying to tie off to another buoy.  The husband went forward to grab the buoy with the boat hook, but the hook end went SPRONG off the handle and into the water (never seen that before!).  Uh oh.  That's not good.  Without a boat hook there 's almost no way to capture a mooring buoy.  So Dave zipped over in the skiff to lend a hand and get them onto the buoy.  Turns out they had a spare boat hook (note to self...) but they were never the less grateful for the assist.

 

Then the next day, we are watching another sailboat headed for the mooring buoy directly in front (upwind) of us.  They appeared to miss the buoy and then let out their jib sail.  Huh?  They are going to sail out of here?  We look and their engine is not engaged.  We get ready to fend them off as there is only one possible outcome here - they come downwind and crash into us.  But oddly, they appear to be stable and not moving.  Dave starts to puzzle how this could be possible with a jib sail out.  Then they launch their skiff.  Dave figures they are in some sort of trouble and heads over in our skiff to assist.  As it turns out, as they were coming up on the buoy they spotted a rope in the water trailing from the buoy.  Fearful of becoming entangled they attempted to just float off the buoy and head for a different buoy.  Alas, they engaged engine while the rope was still floating below their boat and WHUMP, the line got wrapped around their prop and stopped their engine.  This is not good as it means they may have bent their prop shaft.  And in any case means a diver is now required to unwrap the line from the boat.  Dave and the other boat captain attempted to unwrap the line by going into reverse with the prop, but no luck.  Dave was able to actually visually inspect the prop and it was "a birds nest" down there.  None the less, they got hooked to the buoy so they were secure, and this was just a question of how much it would cost to send the diver down to clear the rope from the prop - and hope that the shaft was still straight.

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