Higel Marine Park

Day 125, December 4th, 2009

A miserable day of rain!! The only thing that brightened it up was the wonderful dolphins. At one point we had a dolphin swimming along beside us. He was on our port side, right beside the cockpit. We saw him come up a couple of times before I went for the camera. I tried and tried to catch him as he surfaced but no luck! Frustrating! We need a better camera!!

We stopped for the night in Venice at a little park with a free dock, right beside the Venice Yacht Club. Docking was a bit of a nightmare. John and I couldn't see where the dock or the park were at first so had pretty much decided to drop the anchor close by. Paul and Sue were much more observant and saw where to go immediately. While we tried to turn around in shallow water (and touched a muddy bottom briefly), they were able to tie up and shout over to us that there was just room for us too. So we crawled over to the dock while I ran around tying on the fenders and getting the docking lines on. Unfortunately there was very little room - probably 40 ft and we must be about 38 ft with the dinghy tow. With the wind and current behind us, we were going in a bit fast and further away from the dock than was comfortable. I threw Sue the bow line and she caught it and wrapped it around a piling. My docking line wasn't quite long enough to throw to Paul so I had to leave it till the very last second. It was a one time deal, I threw the line and Paul just managed to grab the bitter end. If he hadn't done so we would have swung around on the bow and bashed into Twice 's Nice. Thank goodness for Paul and Sue!! Its not the first time they've saved our bacon! All this was accomplished in the pouring rain!!

We got talking to some locals also on the dock as they were decorating their boats with Christmas lights. There was going to be a big parade the next evening!!