Weekend!

Friday night

Just had a wonderful dinner of fresh salmon from the farmers market cooked on the BBQ. Looking forward to a great night's sleep aboard and lots of sailing and swimming the rest of the weekend!

Saturday

The sun came out fairly early on Sunday. Here's a panorama view of the Columbia River Gorge from our anchorage.

Sunday

Had some traffic on the river on way back to the marina in the form of a house!

Not very neighborly

So we were only away from Webfoot for less than a week - five days to be exact - and someone hit our raised outboard and broke a big chunk off our propeller. There is even blue paint on the prop! We just had the prop at the shop to get serviced. Now we have to buy a whole new one. 

Why would someone hit a boat that hard and not leave a note? I'm quite disappointed by my fellow sailors.

We struck Gold!

Well not really, but we harvested our first golden potatoes! Back in March we planted our potatoes in a garbage can. I had nearly forgotten about them, since they are off in a corner of our yard but Captain Mike apparently has been paying attention. This morning he pulled out our first homegrown potatoes!

July 4th Downtown Blues Fest

The past few years we spent the 4th in the San Juan Islands. This year we went to the islands earlier in the year and spent the 4th right here in Portland. From our marina on the Columbia we headed down river and then up the Willamette to downtown Portland. To get there we had to go under a total of TEN bridges! No wonder Portland is sometimes called the Bridgetown! We were able to clear 8 of the 10 bridges no problem, but the two railroad bridges had to be raised or swung to let us through. 

Steel Bridge opening

Here is a good article  (you can change the state to be more appropriate for you) on how to travel through bridges. The article states that "Bridge tenders can sometimes be a little cranky" and we found this to be true. Apparently we weren't fast enough for our bridge tender when we were waiting for the swing bridge to open ALL the way. 

When we arrived downtown the festivities were already in full swing and boats were everywhere! We found ourselves a little spot on the outskirts and BBQ-ed our all American meal: ribs, potatoes and corn! During dinner there was a lot of excitement as a boat nearly sank. Lucky for them, the Cost Guard Auxiliary and the fire department had brought their big pumps and were already on site. After spectacular fire works we anchored behind Ross Island for a very restful night.

Hope everyone had a happy Fourth!

Boat is sinking (note the audio portion)