There won’t be many places where I can go for a walk during the next two months, so I got up early and headed back downtown.  I was curious to see if our favorite Mexican Restaurant was still here.  Sadly, they are gone.  This is a tourist town, full of quaint historic old buildings, and interesting boutiques.  Nothing was open yet, so I pretty much had the streets to myself.  

I walked for about an hour, and then headed back to Safeway to get the rest of the groceries that we need.  Across the road, I spotted three deer getting ready to cross the street.  There wasn’t much traffic, luckily.  I waved my arms at a car I saw approaching, and they stopped to let the deer cross.   

When I got back to the boat, I had breakfast and disposed of the rest of our trash.  In the meantime, Al got the engines running, I activated our course line, and we were off to Mystery Bay, on Marrowstone Island.

It’s been over 20 years since we’ve been to Mystery Bay.  The entrance channel to Mystery Bay is extremely narrow, shallow, and serpentine, and if you don’t pay attention and follow the channel buoys, you will go aground.  

Port Townsend is in the background in these shots. Through the camera lens, Port Townsend appears so close it looks  like you could reach out and touch it.

This looks to be a favorite haulout beach for seals.

We were surprised at how many boats there were in Mystery Bay on a week day.  Although there was room at the dock, after already spending one night tied to a dock, we opted to anchor out… so much more peaceful.

Well, everything was peaceful, until the storm blew in, at which time the wind piped up to about 25 knots.  We were relaxing, reading , listening to the wind gusts playing on the boat causing various rattles and squeaks, when I looked up and saw a couple in a runabout circling our boat taking photos with their phone.  “That’s odd,” I thought.  They circled two or three times, and then we heard them yell, “Your boat’s dragging anchor,” as they sped away.

Al surveyed the situation and decided we weren’t dragging, but because the boats around us were on mooring buoys, which kept them pretty stationary, the wind had stretched our anchor chain out, which put us closer to the boats on buoys.  So, Al fired up the engine and we re-anchored well away from the moored boats.  And, it’s a good thing he did, because the wind continued to build to about 30 knots after sunset.