Happy Father's Day & Pelican Sighting!

After a nice walk in Gig Harbor this morning, and grabbing chowder to go from the Tides, my sister picked up the three of us and we headed to Purdy to have lunch with my parents. The chowder was quite good!

On the way back to the Foss, Nick and Caleb were at the helm when, from the cockpit, I spotted a dim shape on distant rocks that I didn't recognize. I almost passed it off as a goose but decided to grab the binoculars and take a closer look. A brown pelican! We've heard they are sometimes around but hadn't seen one. (Although we spotted many white pelicans just ten minutes east of Yakima last weekend on our wine tasting road trip to Walla Walla.)

So no, we didn't see our previous boat (not that Pelican) but is was pretty exciting to see the real thing so close to home!

Busy Weekend

We are in Gig Harbor for the night...again. It's nice to have such a beautiful little harbor to visit when we don't have time to get very far away. 

GO MARINERS!

Nick and Caleb spent Saturday morning fishing...the first time on the Europa. No joy but good time on the water. I worked commencement ceremonies and then the three of us headed out. That was after Caleb made a trip all the way out to Minter  Oyster Co. to get oysters for happy hour. We arrived in GH to find one city buoy available. After a quick trip ashore to get a lemon (and a lime for beers) Caleb, a master shucker, opened enough oysters to satisfy all of us, with some leftover for tomorrow.

GO MARINERS!

Nick grilled a couple of excellent steaks as we watched the Mariners beat the Red Sox.

Did I say GO MARINERS?!

Maritime Gig Festival

This weekend is Gig Harbor's annual maritime festival. The college has a booth at the fair today, and I volunteered for a shift, so we decided it would be a great time to be here in the Europa! Much better than fighting the traffic and crowds on land.

We arrived late afternoon yesterday. We planned to dock at Jerecich Park, or anchor if the dock was full. Of course, it was full, and then some. Boats were already rafted by the time we got here. What we didn't know, is that there are two mooring buoys at this park. Both empty (one still is as I write this early Saturday morning), and they're free! You still need to register but the ticket prints with no payment. The harbor police boat checked in with us later and confirmed this is in fact how it works.

We had a very pleasant evening, visited by  family of geese looking for handouts. 11 goslings!