Totally calm this morning. Temperature in the 20's. Snow predicted.
Roy found a water outlet and filled the tank. I left the candy on the office doorstep. We cast off the lines and departed.
Twenty minutes later, we were heading down the channel on our way out of the harbor. A big automobile ship was ahead of us, being pushed by two tugboats. The bow was so wide that Roy thought he was looking at the stern, but I could see that the bows of the tugboats were headed towards us. We looked through our binoculars. Sure enough, the ship was coming in our direction, fast. Roy maneuvered to avoid it. We both assumed it would turn towards our left, but instead it was going to our right and we were crossing its bow. It was HUGE! We were both staring at it in fascination. I had just said, "That's as close as I ever want to come to a ship that size," when we were practically knocked off our feet by a tremendous jar and loud scraping noise. We both thought we had hit a submerged object, maybe a rock or sunken ship. Then we looked and were shocked to see we had run smack into a five-ton metal buoy! Hit it square on. Couldn't have hit it more directly in the center if we'd been aiming for it. We immediately turned around and headed back to the dock to check the damage. A sizable chunk of wood had been knocked out of the prow above the water line, but the hole didn't go through. Roy patched it up, and we left again, kicking ourselves for not watching where we were going, but also thankful it hadn't been a lot worse.
The rest of the day was mercifully without incident. We motored south until dark and then dropped anchor a quarter mile off Randle Cliff Beach.
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