I wasn’t going to make this it’s own post but so much happened in the following passage (foreshadowing!) that I decided to separate out my stay.
Basically we were there for a week, and although the town itself has seen better days (esp the area we were in, oof) everyone we met there was so lovely and helpful.
The tone was set right after we pulled in when ‘Nate’, one of the resident liveaboards came by and gave us his spare key as the office wasn’t open on weekends. He then asked if we like dogs, cos ‘him and the other liveaboards lets their dogs run around at night as there is a homeless problem’ (direct quote). Welcome to Eureka I guess. We later saw this dog taskforce, and it consisted of one 3 legged dog, one that looked like a absolutely jacked chihuahua that had been doing steroids for years and a third very dopey, friendly dog. Pretty funny dog gang!
Kelsey and Russell decided to go on a mini roadtrip for a few days, so I was left to get on with the multitude of projects I hadn’t yet got around to doing before I left. Having Maquinna Pt right in front of us was lovely as I got to hang out with Holley, Cass and Geoff in between boat projects. Holley was in the middle of replacing her transmission with a different one, which involved moving and machining a bunch of new parts which is a major project for anyone, let alone in the water in a foreign port, but she is a beast and was making great progress.
I filled my time doing some boat projects, mainly
- installing my Garhauer solid vang (I had the same one on Gudge and loved it so much I wanted it again)
- pulling the main halyard, vang line and outhaul back to the cockpit
- installing my mast cap (that had the anchor light and red/green light on it)
- finishing the solar panel install
- getting my fishing stuff sorted
- replace spreader lights with my new LED ones
This all went without a hitch although it did mean I spent a LOT of time up the mast
installing this dumb thing (although note the sweet deck organiser I also installed)
Finally, the crew came back, the weather cleared and it was onto the next stage
