WTH Part 3, end of the Trilogy

We wanted to be at Two Harbors a day before the big "Cruiser's Weekend" started. We like getting in before it gets too crowded, settle in and relax. That is so NOT what happened! Oh sure, we got in late afternoon, had a glass of wine and made some dinner. We didn't even get the dinghy in the water that night. Just a nice quiet dinner on board and chatted with our mooring neighbor's. We had some really nice and funny neighbor's. It was a peaceful evening.

The next day we slept in, had our luxurious morning coffee out in the cockpit and just watched the world go by. We had reached our desired effect of the "aaahhhhhh factor." That was our Universe allotment of the "aaahhhhh factor" though. Time to get moving and shaking, put the dinghy in the water, mount the engine and get to shore and visit with the Cruiser's Party! "Adventure Voyaging", Woody Henderson was throwing the party, excellent individual!! You can't find a nicer person on this planet. Charlie's Chart's, Holly Scott was in and ready to lead us on a week long Floatilla that she puts on once a year, after Cruiser's Weekend, another excellent individual!! The band for the weekend was crazy awesome, the food was crazy awesome and then... (Que up the melodramatic sound tract!!!) the fit, hit the shan!!!

That fatal moment that all boater's dread!! The head just stops functioning on a dime!! (This is a WTF?!!) it's inevitable, bound to happen at some point, but REALLY?!!! On the Island, no dock to go running down and into a public head?! Oh NO!!! That's a PLANNED journey when you are out on a mooring ball!! You have to make sure everything is shut down and off (so you don't burn down your battery bank, or catch fire) jump in the dinghy, (and your dinghy should be firing up on command?) blast off to the dinghy dock, find a place to park, (because it's major crowded for the weekend!) tie up, hike up the dock and locate your now, eminent destination, the BATHROOM!!! This all unfolds the night before the big party! Mike is determined to fix the situation and we have an early-ish night and go back to the boat, dreading the impending mess...and a mess it was! We'll spare y'all the dirty details, but Mike tore apart the head, pump and into the pipe's. He rebuilt the entire system and the moment of truth, was an epic fail!! Mike tares everything apart, AGAIN!! There is another moment of truth, holding our breath (for obvious reason's!)
Sah-weeeeeeet!! NASA, we have launch!! Goodnight, tomorrow's another day!

En la mañana....
No es bueno!! I don't know what the deal was, but what appeared to be flowing smoothly?! Was a cruel, fleeting moment of triumph! It just went in the shitter from there, (pardon the pun!)

Plan B?!
The second head, up in the forward, has been our so called "garage" since we started this journey. I mean totally full, to the ceiling and to the door stuffed! Before we turn in and try and get a few hours of sleep, I unpack the forward head and re-arrange the whole V-berth. Where did all this "stuff" come from?! Good gravy!! Do we really need ALL that?! Might be "purge" time? Mike goes in to open the water intake and we cross our fingers that it's functioning. We hadn't used it in over two years. Thank the Heavens above that it worked!!

The next couple of days were fun! We saw some great folks, Jim and his lovely wife Vickie, that we originally met on one of our Tahiti sailing trips (that Captain Woody Henderson was on too) in 2011. Ate, drank and a very merry time! After the Cruisers weekend, it was time to toss the mooring line and head a few miles North, up Island to Emerald Bay. I could see why they called it Emerald Bay! It was gorgeous!

However, before we pulled in, there were a few Mylar balloons to sweep up in the net, more "man over board" practice! We saw one weird bump in the water, okay...now what?! We came up on the object, which we now identified as a Seagull that appeared to be having problems. The Seagull was barely hanging on and struggling to keep his head above water and keep himself upright. Alright, "Operation Bob" was launched! Mike circled around him, I jumped in the dinghy that we were trailing behind the boat. Mike got me close, I reached out and gently put my hand's around the Seagull, now named Bob and brought him into the dinghy, wrapping him in a big towel. He was exhausted!! I put him down in the dinghy and he just rolled over and laid there. His eyes were open, his breathing was shallow and I was thinking that his outlook was bleak. He raised his head and just looked at me? Was that a "thank you"? or just shock at his new surroundings? I pulled myself up to the dive deck, we were at idle speed and Mike got to the transom so I could hand off Bob to him. Mike set him down in the cockpit, wrapped him in the towel. I grabbed Q's water bowl and tried to give him some fresh water. Bob just laid there, his head, resting on the edge of the bowl and barely moving, but still breathing, slow shallow breaths. I wanted to look him over for injuries, but he was pretty spent and I thought rest might be the best for now.
Emerald Bay!
Time to address the boat and get it together to pull up a mooring line.
A strong current in the cove gave us a hard time pulling up the mooring line, probably should have just anchored, but Mike and I were still catching up on sleep. We both are up a lot at anchor, just checking "stuff". So the mooring it was, no wondering about dragging anchor! We went to pull the dinghy around and go hit the beach for the meet and greet, "Around the Rocks" Flotilla, had officially started. Mike went to pull the starter cord and of course the fuel line just started squirting and being nasty and stinky and the fuel connector to the engine decided not to work.... Dead Dinghy!! Get the oars out, it's going to be a loooooooong week!

The meet and greet was awesome! An extraordinary diverse group of boaters! Very cool! This was the beginning of a great and adventuress week! Back at the boat, Bob was having a bit of a hard time. After he had a little rest, he was getting somewhat more cognitive and our moving around was making him somewhat spastic. Mike and I went down below for a quiet evening and to give Bob some space. He had drank some water and was moving around more, so hopefully he was gaining strength and would be better in the morning? At one point we didn't notice that Miss Q had gone up top? Oh crap, Bob?!! We poked our heads up to look around, there wasn't any commotion or anything. There was Bob, Miss Q was sitting right next to him. He had his eyes closed, resting peacefully and Q was just hanging out with him, leaning up against his towel. Everything was peaceful. Q is so good at coexisting! Very cool!

The next day we woke up to some banging noises in the cockpit. It was Bob, feeling somewhat better, yet still struggling. Q heard the commotion and came running up. Apparently Bob did not remember the previous latter night vigil Q had held with him?! Bob started flopping around and getting all crazy stressed out! I didn't realize how damn big he was!! His wing span reached across the cockpit (over a four foot span!) and he was getting to the panic point where he was going to cause himself more harm. He was jumping around and jumped right out of the cockpit and into the water! Q was all freaked out and ran down below within the first five seconds of Bobs waking moment! As Bob hit the water, he flopped over to the side, struggling to be upright again. I jumped in the dinghy and rowed over to him, gently plucked him back out of the water and put him in the dinghy. I looked at Mike, I was at a flux! What do we do with Bob?! He's going to tare himself up if we put him back in the cockpit?! We agreed that we should take him to shore, put him in the most protected place we could find and let nature take its course. That was a heavy hearted decision, but to keep him on the boat would have been so stressful, he would not have made that. We told some other boaters about him, so maybe they could keep an eye on him and also informed the harbor patrol, in hopes that there might be a rescue program?! Nope, it's an Island with little resources for rescues of the common wildlife. Bye Bob, peace be with you!

We left Catalina Island and headed for Santa Barbara Island. We saw two pods of Risso Dolphin. They passed us on our Port side, they were headed South and I had no time to focus a camera, boo on me! There were several huge super pod's of Common Dolphin too! Lots of Dolphins!! We headed for the South end of the Island and pulled in to drop anchor. We motored the whole way over. There was not one puff of wind, it looked like we were moving through oil, because of the calmness of the Sea, a little on the eery side. The Ranger Station there used to have a pier/landing dock, so you could dinghy in and hike around, but Hurricane Maria had taken it out and there was no going ashore. Just in the other Bay, there was a huge Rookery of Sea Lion's and Elephant Seal's, thousands of bird's, of many species! It was very cool to see. One of our Flotilla friends lent us their dinghy, so we didn't spend the day rowing!

Our Flotilla was a diverse crowd, but super interesting and fun people. I think the family of six, with the four small kid's was probably my favorite boat! Kinda new to the boating thing, but the kid's were so awesome and only because the parents were top notch awesome! The youngest at 3 and the oldest at 9, they were out of school for the week, but we all ran around in clumps of boat people, finding nature's treasures and picking up trash, everywhere we went, land and sea. The kids boat won the prize for plucking the most Mylar balloons out of the water, upwards of 30 Mylar balloons in ONE leg, plus much more debris. They were so excited, every day was a new adventure! It was an extra added bonus of fun to have them there! So much fun to be around!

The WTH shadow...was it over for now?