Freddie Anderson, a local artist and fisherman started the
Blessing of the Fleet several years ago. He persuaded the local processors and vendors to donate food and various safety items that he uses for door prizes. He makes the rounds of the different religious traditions represented in the area and asks a different person each year to say a few words (and depending on the preacher, it's sometimes more than a few), they give away a few door prizes based on tickets we get when we sign in, and then eat a little (or in some cases, a lot), a few more door prizes and then... the grand prize! 
I think we all had fun - here are Hannah (left) and Hugh, thumb wrestling, and Makenzie, refereeing.
Our crew was very lucky - Jeff was first, winning a life jacket.
Jake won Peter Pan sweat pants;
Evan won a Peter Pan T shirt;
Yin won a little carrying pouch;
Hugh won a documentary called Red Gold;
I won a life ring
(and gave it to my neighbor who just said he needed one and I thought we had enough - but wasn't positive); and Yin won the grand prize
- a life ring (now I'm sure), a Peter Pan vest, and a bear carved with a chainsaw by our wonderful neighbor, Mark, of Bearcarver.com. The same one with the chainsaw injury a few days ago. I did check the bear for blood spots. None. 
We decided not to try to work on the New Boat since the gas tank didn't come in today and we couldn't finish it. Chris and Hugh finished setting up the water system so now we can wash ourselves and our equipment off when we come in from a tide (and in a pinch, we can wash down fish, though we try to keep them out of the mud). Here is the much maligned mud. The processors don't like it on our fish because it is hard on their equipment (in my opinion, they would be wise to bring back the wash down tank that used to stand
where cars are now parked), some setnetters don't like it because it's darned hard to walk through over and over and over again - it gets on and in everything. Don't worry - Roger still has feet, they're just a little buried. On the other hand, walking through it is a cardiovascular workout like none other I've found, and the calf muscles this develops can't be beat. Roger is looking forward to the impact of negotiating this mud on his bicycling when he gets back home.
You can't drive through it - trucks, no matter how big the tires and how many wheels are driving, just get buried. But a ranger can do it. The wide tracks provide enough displacement not to sink and the treads give them traction. They are a welcome piece of equipment, especially with outside sites that are about 1300' of mud away from where the buyer can take delivery of our fish. But we couldn't bring the rangers to the sites without having to drive them over about a one foot cliff created by the tide eating away at the beach access road. The rangers aren't flexible enough to take the cliff without significant risk of tipping over. So we waited.
Now the City has repaired the beach access road so Chris and Trevor took one ranger
(the Friendly Ranger - Chris is jumping off it in this photo) and Roger and I took the other one (the Killer Ranger) down to the sites. Roger took the helm before we'd gone far and learned how that ranger communicates its intentions. It's good to sit if you can for stability's sake, but not all that comfortable if you do. We got the rangers parked up high, out of the way of the tide and without incident, the wind has turned southwest.
We pulled the kites out of storage for the first time in a long time (the tails are just catching up with the nosedive here on the left), the crew threw 
rocks into the water (here are Evan, Hugh, and Trevor). 
Trevor just came to offer some brownies (thank you, Meredith!) and told me that Roger got really good pictures of the crew jumping off the cliff (eek!!). "No one broke a leg," he assured me, "Makenzie was there."... all is well.
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