Sunday morning. The Grand Banks rendezvous is over. Time to go. Boats started leaving early. Real early.
I managed to get a few photos of some of the boats departing. A number of folks had already departed by the time I thought of it, though.
Voyageur
The last day of the Pacific Northwest Grand Banks Owner’s Association’s Grand Banks rendezvous in Roche Harbor is over. Lots of stuff going on today.
The weather has been fantastic, but that looks like it is about to change. Rain is on the horizon for the trip back to Seattle.
Most boats arrived Thursday afternoon. The official start of the rendezvous is Friday. A number of boats arrived Friday morning. We have new neighbors on both sides.
We met a number of people, looked at some great boats, listened to a few talks, and ate a bunch of food. We are off to a good start.
We are here at the Rendezvous. Guest Dock. 28. Stern In. Starboard Tie.
But first, getting here … We left Point Hudson this morning at 0800. We knew it might be a bumpy ride for a while north of Point Wilson. I think we were both surprised at the bouncing around. For the first 4 or 5 miles, waves were occasionally large with short distance between the next. This made for some good ups and downs with a few moments of an almost weightlessness feeling. We discovered what needs better security. Drawers flew open, then shut. The oven opened and closed on its own, and things generally bounced around. Then the seas settled down. We were much more comfortable the remainder of the trip through Cattle Passage. Once between the islands, seas were calm.
We are on our way to our first Grand Banks rendezvous. Our destination is Roche Harbor on San Juan Island.
This will be our first rendezvous. Our idea of boating is a quiet place with no one else are around. This will be interesting. We are sporting brand new brightwork by Native Brightworks and shiny new doors from Mike Thomas at Thomas Marine Interiors.
Last night we were at the Point Hudson marina. Fewer boats than I would have expected here. In fact, there were only six.
Our next stop is Roche Harbor. We’ll be on our way shortly.
I am diggin’ the new Crocs Beach Line boat shoes. Extremely light and comfortable. This is not an ad … unless someone would like to pay us. We just want to point out nifty products when we find them. I stumbled on these when I was on the hunt for new boat shoes. Crocs are all made of plastic (I think). These are.
One of the joys of boating is inviting friends to visit for the weekend … then putting them to work. That was Bruce’s fate this weekend.
Last year, we added a seat and steering station to our 12 foot Flexboat inflatable. This was a great improvement to the usability of the boat. The details can be found in this post. What we learned was that we still need a fair amount of weight forward to keep the bow down and allow the boat to plane easily. To address this, the second person in the boat usually sits forward. Too bad there is no seat up there and that person has to sit facing backward.
Our solution was to add a matching seat forward in the boat. This gives the passenger something to sit on and allows them to face forward (or backward, I guess, if they want to … or maybe even sideways …).
We ordered a seat from St. Croix Marine Products through Defender.com. The seat matches the seat we put in earlier. Defender was the only place I could find it. St. Croix no longer lists this seat on their site. It may or may not have been discontinued … which may also explain the sale price at Defender.
