Some photos from Squalicum Yacht Club festivities:

We were lucky enough to be invited aboard the Argonaut II as the owner, Nicholas, was at Cap Sante Marina for a quick provisioning trip. We’ve seen this boat before, and heard a bit about it. Kudos to Nicholas for caring enough to try and keep this boat going. Look it up; it’s an interesting story. He does videos too.

Also pictured above is the line of boats waiting to get past the train bridge across the northern end of the Swinomish Channel. This has happened to us just once before. There were quite a few boats this time, which caused a bit of a back up. Note to boaters: if you notice what looks like boats waiting, get in line! There’s a reason…and it makes sense to put some space between vessels.

One more item of interest. We witnessed what may have been the craziest boat docking we’ve experienced. To be clear, the Swinomish Channel can get squirrelly, and there isn’t a lot of room to maneuver on the inside of the guest dock. (In the first photo, look at the space between where we are on the dock and the line of covered slips and boats behind.) There was some wind and quite a bit of current.

A guy and his wife came in to grab a space at the dock on a 40+ foot power boat and it became obvious very quickly that he was not in control. He used way too much power forward and backward, he hit at least one other boat (not any of our YC boats, and no apparent damage) and the dock. He kept trying, without really aborting and starting over – as he should have in my humble opinion. This went on for a good twenty minutes. Several of our group were on the dock trying to help but there wasn’t much anyone could do other than hope it ended soon without damage.

He finally made it. Come to find out, he used to have a sailboat and had just picked this boat up two weeks before. We also heard that they got stuck in the mud on the way in because they didn’t know about “red right returning.” Oy.

As the boat that they hit was leaving later that day, the captain was heard to yell out to the guy, “Hang in there!” Very generous of him.