Weekend Warrior

Sunday Miracle

By Capt. Bill Pike

What Did It Cost?

Total Fuel: $1,269.32 (calculated using an approximate weekend mileage of 198 nautical miles, an operating efficiency of 0.56 nmpg at 22 knots, and a fuel price of $3.59/gal., the going rate for diesel at Shilshole Bay Marina at the end of June)

Total Dockage: $108.50 ($51 at Langley Small Boat Harbor and $57.50 at Islands Marine Center)

Entertainment: $12 (one regular movie ticket and one senior citizen)

Groceries: $162.66 ($73.60 from Whole Foods and $89.06 from Bayleaf)

Restaurant Meals: $380 (for three people)

Grand Weekend Total: $1,931.75

You sleep late on Sunday, right? So we all did, eventually arising to a PNW meteorological mood swing—the San Juans, and everywhere else according to our VHF, had turned warm, windless, and sunny. We toasted the news with coffee and leftover blueberry pie, split three ways. The breakfast of champions!

The trip back to Shilshole was a 60-nautical-miler. Which was excellent, really. Long, smooth boat rides give a guy a chance to think. Certainly, our three-day-weekend cruise had been both wonderful and wonderfully relaxing. We’d seen lots, done lots, and, I gotta admit, eaten lots.

But goat cheese? 

I contemplated the phenomenon of the night before—I’d actually eaten the stuff, despite the skeethy qualms I’d developed as a kid due to a cheek-by-jowl association with a vicious, none-too-hygienic old specimen named Billy.

The explanation? The only thing I could figure was that, under the spell of an exceptionally fine waterborne experience, I’d been somehow transported into a profoundly life-altering state of mind. And then, to be painfully truthful about the whole deal, that salad Lisa had forked over was flat-out freakin’ delicious!