We were in Newport for four days. It’s a huge fishing community, both commercial and recreational. The marina is run by the city of Newport, and has a large RV park as part of the facility. It seems plenty of fishermen come here with their RV and boat, and go fishing during the day, then come back to the RV community to hangout together. It looked a lot like the cruising (sailing) community, but in land yachts.
It was a long walk over a bridge to get to town, but there are local taxis (2 of them) you can use…when they aren’t busy with other fares. There’s also a bus system that has a stop at the marina/RV office, but you have to plan your trip carefully, as the route runs in a circuit around town.
Rogue Brewing has their main brewery here. They were open for limited seating, so we had a nice meal there our first night.
We had our first introduction to the cruising community, meeting other cruisers. Dean and Roxanne are in Endearing, a power boat. They go up and down the Pacific Coast from their home in Vancouver, WA to Mexico. They are on their way south, too. They shared interesting and helpful info on places they’ve stopped. We’ve stayed in touch. Brian and Teresa are in a sailboat, headed north to the San Juans after 8 months in San Diego. They are tired of the heat and ready for cooler weather. (????) They shared some insight on places they’ve stayed as they hop along the coast in day hops. We also met Dave and Linda on Frisky, a catamaran. We saw them briefly already. They pulled into Port Angeles just as we were leaving after getting fuel. And they stopped one night in Neah Bay before they headed south ahead of us. They had stopped somewhere else before Newport. We hadn’t met them before, but had a chance to stop and exchange boater cards so we could stay in touch.
Our next destination was Crescent City, CA. We kept an eye on weather for a smoother passage, and took off at 6 AM on Aug 17.
Well, at least we attempted to leave. We had planned our departure to match the incoming tide, because we knew our slip was in an area that wasn’t deep. We hadn’t kept track of the depth while here with each low tide. When we went to leave, I put the engine in gear, and we didn’t move. There was just prop wash. At first, we freaked. What was broken? Then I looked at the depth gauge and it read “0” (distance below the keel) We were sitting untied from the dock and not moving. Our keel was sitting on the bottom.
We’ve been aground before, and realize that if you can’t get the boat to move with a couple of tries with the engine, we’re better to wait until the tide comes in and floats us. So we sat for another 45 minutes and tried again.
We were sufficiently floating to get the keel loose from the bottom and we could get off the dock. We motored out of the marina and down the river to the ocean and were off for the 2nd leg of our trip to San Francisco.
