Despite purging the clams overnight in seawater and many changes of fresh water, there was still a lot of sand in the clams, so I ended up using only the cooking broth and a little bit of the solid muscle in the chowder.
Fortunately, I caught some lovely flathead, so one went into the chowder and the others made an excellent dinner!
With strong westerlies forecast and a disinclination to rush anywhere we moseyed over to Orford again. Prosser beach is an excellent place to hang out in anything from S to NW.
On a calm, but showery, morning we took the dinghy up the Prosser River into Orford for a bit of shopping and lunch. The recommended lunch stop (Orford Café Diner) had very nice and reasonably priced fish and chips, but we waited almost an hour for our food to be served! I think our order was misplaced, since every other table was served before us. “Pop’s Garden” veggie stall on the main road had some great homegrown tomatoes. Rain squalls came and went for the rest of the day.
The next day was blustery, with the wind building throughout the afternoon to a steady mid-20kts. The wind instrument recorded a maximum gust of 46kts. Rusalka and the other boats danced around a bit, but the anchor held firm. It was a lazy day, given over to reading (we’ve started reading a Stuart McBride book out loud to each other) and rock painting.
We woke up today, looked at the forecast and decided to wait another day before going through the canal – no rush, so why not stay and enjoy the east coast?
