Patience.

On this, the first day of our planned voyage to San Francisco, Mother Nature provided us with our first test: Patience. Though we'd planned to leave Shilshole this afternoon and anchor out somewhere tonight, after listening to the weather forecast--and seeing what actually developed--we decided to sit tight in our slip, and postpone leaving until tomorrow.

All day long, Scoots danced in her slip, playing with the wind, anxious to be free. We'd intended to leave this afternoon, and anchor somewhere north of here, but with 40 knot winds knocking trees down ashore and raising whitecaps in the marina, we decided to stay put until tomorrow.



It turned out to be a great day. We got to spend time with our dockmates, Miriam and Keith, who live aboard the lovely Hans Christian sailboat Aurora. They invited us over for coffee and orange-flavored Spanish tortas, and then took us to the grocery store to do our provisioning (two shopping carts' worth), so we wouldn't have to take a taxi. Really nice people.



Back on Scoots, we stashed the food, repaired the cover for our Code 0 sail that had shredded in the wind, set up the wind-steered autopilot, attached the jacklines (safety lines to which we'll clip our safety harnesses anytime we're on deck while at sea), had lunch, and took a short nap.

Miriam and Keith came over at 5:30 for drinks and snacks and conversation. It was fun to get to know them better. Hopefully we'll see them in other ports in the future.

Tonight, the wind has died and the weather sounds more reasonable for tomorrow, so our plan is to get up early, be at the fuel dock to fill up with diesel at 8 am, and then head north...