Chincoteague Island, VA

The waves kicked up in the morning and we wanted a dock to escape the strong current and windy conditions. The harbormaster wasn't answering on Channel 16. I have been discovering that you have a better chance getting ahold of harbormasters, pumpout boats and marinas by phone, they don't seem to be monitoring their respective channels all that often. 

We navigated the channel to Chincoteague island with about a 3 kt current behind us and we motored into the Curtis Merritt harbor of refuge, sideways. We tied up to the handicap floating dock (very fitting for the situation). The harbormaster finally got back to us and said we couldn't stay in the handicap parking. He did offer another slip where we could dock as long as we wanted for free...  but the slip was a pain in the ass to tie up in. George, a friendly charter fishermen stopped by and offered to help and he rounded up 4 other guys. Turned out we needed all of them. It was easy enough to pull in since it was about 25 ft wide, but we had to lengthen every docking line we had and get them around the pilings using Tater Tot. It looked good in the end, but it took awhile to get to that point.  As you can see in the picture, we had to position Tater Tot to step between Sarah and the finger pier. Less than ideal, but free! 

Probably could have rode out a hurricane in this slip!

Cold showers call for a little rum to warm up before, during... and after