The fishing derby turned out to be quite a hoot. Not for fishing of course. In the past 3 years I have not caught a single keeper fish in more than 5 derby’s. I’m thinking I’m the luck equivalent of bannana’s to fishing.
First of al, the weather was tough all weekend. We ended up only fishing one official day and had a pretty darn good go at it. We were getting fantastic fish marks over off humphrey head, but could not get any good bites. Oh well, next time. One day we took a gander when most folks were staying in harbor. We got out into Guemes channel and there were 4 footers rolling past the Guemes ferry dock at which point we decided to sit the day out. Steve’s 24 Bay is actually a fantastic boat to fish out of. Everything is set up well, its well kept, and Steve knows how to make everything work jsut right. A good sea boat it is not though. The boat has less than 1/2 inch freeboard though its self draining cockpit and literally is kept afloat by a pair of ping pong ball checkvalves. Scares the bajeezes out of me but I have to admit that we have fished the heck out of that boat and it just keeps on delivering. I’m actually kind of fond of it, but given the ping pong flotation system, I’m just as glad to have sat this one out.
Fishing or not though, this was an exciting weekend, which lasted until Tuesday for me as I waited two extra days for storms to pass. Crazy Mary showed up on Friday and proceeded to get kicked out of the Village Pizza/Wheelhouse for life. In the spirit of “what happens in Vegas”, I won’t publish the full details but here’s a few sprinkling of teasers. Mary gets kicked out by the owner while sitting at my table by the owner, who is a good fishing buddy of my brother in law, who’s also sitting at my table. While Mary is generally though of as a republican, her antics landed her in the good graces of a well known long time democrat congressman from our state who wound up admonishing the proprieter on her behalf. I tell you, you can’t buy entertainment like this. They don’t call her Crazy Mary for nothing.
In addition to Steve Monrad, I met up with Cara and the finch’s and of course CM. We had our own little mini Tolly get together amongst the derby!
Sunday night found me downloading a new wind meter application for the iphone. While the harbor was spared the worst of the storm, gusts would occasionally whip up some excitement. Standing on the bow I measured 22 knots but I think this storm was packing quite a bit more wind speeds outside the harbor.
The marina gave me a GREAT deal on moorage, even for the extra storm days as part of being in the derby. For once I really have to sing the praises of the Cap Sante Marina for really trying to do the right thing. Great Job guys.