July 11 - Port Orchard

Another day, another fine breakfast – this time it was scrambled eggs with green onions, sausage and cheese mixed in. Ray and I also headed out for a walk down to the activity float to pick up a few more muffins and check on the raffle number postings – so far we haven’t won anything.

There are a few more boats here today – some are tied up along the outside of the breakwater where they can get a pretty good beating from the wakes of passing boats. There are also a lot more people in town and walking the docks viewing the boats. We’ve had several admirers stop and chat. On shore, the Saturday Market is in full swing, and Erin, Mary and I walked up to peruse whatever was being offered. Erin and Mary ended up with new sun shade hats, and we were going to buy a new bouquet of flowers, but lost patience with the proprietor and decided our roses would hold out nicely through the weekend.

A little later in the day we had some special guests on board – Jim and Barb Jorgenson, the former owners of Potentate. They live in Gig Harbor, a bit of a drive but on the same side of the Sound. We always enjoy seeing them, especially aboard Potentate. This year we could show off our new carpet and sofa, as well as the teak table Ray made. We had sent them pictures of it, along with the story of how Trav and Barb had asked Ray to build it for their boat. Jim always has stories to tell, and we usually learn some new tidbit about the boat every time we see them. Today was no exception and I’ll probably be head down and butt up sometime in the future looking for the wires that are stubbed off with the intention of additional lighting. I think I’ve described before how Jim had rewired the entire boat, and I still proudly open the electrical panel to show off the neatly loomed and arranged wiring behind it, just as he did for us when we first viewed the boat.

We decided not to partake of the catered dinner event in the park this evening, choosing instead to have a casual dinner aboard. We later joined the crowd ashore to give our batch of raffle tickets one more chance to bring us a prize, but no such luck. Awards were given for the peoples’ choice of both wood and fiberglass boats, as well as the most improved. Ten years ago, when we came here for the first time with the Potentate, we ended up with a trophy – I’ll have to take another look at it, but it was either People’s Choice or President’s Choice, or something like that. We were reminded of that by Joel Van Ormund, who stopped by to chat in the morning. His boat, the Scandalon, also received an award that year, and is moored at Harbor Village in Kenmore, right next to the Bar-T-Na, Trav and Barb’s boat. Apparently someone had been talking, because he knew all about our boating adventures with Trav and Barb.

The weather forecast for tomorrow calls for cooler temperatures with a chance of rain, and as we walked back to the boat we could see and feel the changes taking place already. To our west, beyond Bremerton, we saw some dark clouds and several flashes of lightning, some followed eventually by distant thunder. It’s apparently a fairly weak front, as the weather is supposed to improve on Monday, with sunshine and mid 70’s through the week. Just to ensure that we wouldn’t be rained on this evening, we put in the windows over the helm and Erin set out some drip bowls under our known interior leaks. I’ve been re-caulking our decks and resealing the windows, but the job isn’t finished and the rain knows it.

Tomorrow we head for Kingston, an easy cruise.