New Dodger & Bimini

Dodger and Bimini Before

Dodger & Bimini In Progress

Anchor Alarm

Our Furuno chart plotter has an anchor watch feature that you can set in the cockpit and at the nav station independently of each other. What's nice is that it draws a diameter of the limit you set. That way, you don't have to guess what to set it to. Our first night at anchor, we set .010nm (60ft). The anchor alarm went off in the middle of the night and we woke up, flashed the spotlight and tried to determine if we were dragging. The location indicator for the boat was hovering near the edge of our swing radius. After deciding that we were not dragging, and that our swing radius was set too small, we decided to set the anchor watch to .020nm (121 ft). Below are our anchor alarm circles for 2 different nights. The red marks inside the circle are our tracks from swinging at anchor.

Tomato and Mozzarella Fans

On our way back to Hayden Island, Geralyn made this beautiful and delicious lunch. It's a recipe from a Jaques Pepin cookbook that we like; Fast Food My Way.

Martin Island

We found this cool little anchorage called Martin Slough, on the north side of the Columbia. The approach is a little shallow, but no problem at this time of the year, with the river near flood stage. There were a few boats in the anchorage already, so we picked a spot we thought was far away from the other boats, but once we had let out our anchor chain, we thought our swing radius was too close to a trawler. We didn't want to worry about it, so we raised the anchor and dropped it again about 100 ft back. This time, we landed pretty close to shore, but after monitoring our swing, decided it would be ok. Our Furuno chart plotter has an anchor watch feature that you can set in the cockpit and at the nav station independently of each other. During the evening, we set both so we could hear the alarm in either the cockpit or in the cabin. At night, we set the anchor watch at the nav station only, to conserve amps. We also have a handheld Garmin GPS that has an anchor watch, so if we are worried about dragging anchor, we can set the handheld anchor alarm in the forward berth as well. Depth was 30ft, so we let out 200ft of scope (almost 7:1).

Martin Island