Today marks Pasargada’s 11th day at Foss Harbor Marina in Tacoma. I’ve been using wifi and cellular pairing to work from the boat most weekdays but chose to take a couple days off (such as today). Noj is taking a nine-day USCG Captains License course at https://www.flagshipmaritimellc.com. He passed his basic requirements yesterday and will be taking the master 25-ton, sailing, radio, and towing endorsement tests tomorrow.

The marina is nice enough to let us stay here during the course even though they are closed to general transient moorage. We are tied up to the fuel dock which is pretty busy as they are really easy to access on the way in and out of Foss waterway and have pump-out service as well. As I sit on the boat during the day I get to hear all sorts of conversations and hear the occasional boat coming in too fast without even having their dock lines out as the great fuel dock staff rush to assist them.

Today is chilly and windy. I took the day off intending to work some more on the slipcovers for the salon settees. I started the project two years ago and haven’t finished it so have maybe half of them covered and half uncovered. I’m really dreading getting the long backs right in such a way I can cinch the cord down behind the cushion and have it look right.

The first thing I did this morning was walk 1.4 miles to Stadium Thriftway. I walked up the stairs at the 11th street bridge and then up to Broadway and took the slow uphill incline to get there. I hadn’t gone through that part of downtown Tacoma before and found it to be really nice looking.

The marina is also nice and they have a little store with some groceries that I bought milk at on Sunday. To practice social distancing you actually just go to the service window and tell them what you want to buy instead of going inside the little market.

When classes ended Friday, we sailed to Gig Harbor and stayed there for two nights. It was a little busy for anchorage on Friday but cleared up after that. We went on shore Saturday and found it to be not as busy as usual, but still pretty busy. Certainly the city dock was super crowded with dinghies. Most folks were wearing masks (everyone I saw was wearing them indoors). We got some food to go from The Harbor General Store and ate it on some chairs overlooking the water with beers from Gig Harbor Brewing. We made a ton of power with the solar panels over the past week as well. We still haven’t put in the new through-hull ports for the connectors but we run the cables out the back hatch and have the quick-connects ready to go up top.

I’ve added some photos of the low tide at EBM when we left Seattle, the lighthouse at Maury Island on our way down, the Foss Harbor Marina and Foss waterway as well as our solar panels.