The End is Nigh
Thursday morning I emerged bleary eyed from the hold to find the entire crew of the Lady had showed up to bid us goodbye (the two boats had been moored out of sightof eachother). We sailed up the Sacramento river as far as a wee town called Antioch, where there were a surprising number of misadventures for the time we were there -- from the moment we got there in fact. As we sent the smallboat in to land people to catch our lines a police boat accosted them and extremely rudely berated them for not having more running lights (it was dark out), despite that we were very definitely in full compliance with maritime law (we double checked after. We were right. Police aren't known for their understanding of maritime law usually). During the night there were several boarders.
Friday morning we set off to continue up the river. The shore for much of the way consisted of golden brown rolling hills topped with giant white windmills. The sky was completely blue, and the sun so bright you couldn't even look in that direction. Presently the rolling hills disappeared behind 30 foot banks on either side. As these banks were often quite lush with vegetation and you couldn't see beyond them, if one didn't know what was on the other side one might think we were travelling through tropical jungles.
Arriving here we found that the dock is just below the balcony of a Joe's Crabshack, and said balcony was filled with drunk people shouting "ahoy!" "avast!" and "pirates!" There were some more such people on the dock itself, and as we came in a boat pulled up to gawk on the other side of us, leaving us utterly surrounding by obnoxious onlookers. Hooray for Sacramento! You can practically touch the Joe's Crabshack balcony from the course yard, and they play their music so loud we might as well be IN the crabshack. Additionally their music repeats every half hour. Welcome to the next two months of your lives my shipmates!!
It's looking like all (six adults and a number of minors) my Davis relatives happen to be getting together tomorrow (Saturday) to celebrate a birthday, so I get to see them all at once! I'm not sure who else I know who is still in this area but one of my favourite people, my friend Shemek, dropped me a line that he's in town so I'll probably see him at some point. I think I'll leave the boat Sunday evening.. and I haven't quite determined how I'm getting home from here (either Craigslist or the train probably).
I was going to edit and upload pictures yesterday but they turned the power off to the boat entirely much sooner than I expected leaving me most significantly unable to put up and post the pictures I was going to use for ljshootout, which had a deadline today. Having missed the deadline and two prior ones, due to the difficulty of participating from the boat, it looks like I'm out of the competition now. If I'd just been able to scrape by this week I'd have had smooth sailing as I'm returning to a land based life, but alas it looks like I may be this season's first casualty in fact. d:
I suppose I'll still follow along as a noncontestant.
But the pictures I was going to post yesterday I posted today, they can be found here and here.