The marina can get pretty busy on weekends, so Al called the marina office as soon as they opened this morning to reserve space for us at the dock.   This place can be very busy this time of year, so we were delighted they had room for us at the end of “H” dock.  

As soon as we were tied up and had power, I went up to the office to pay for our moorage and get the password for the WiFi.  Sadly, we found the WiFi signal was even weaker than last year, which means I won’t be able to post to my blog.  Bummer.

Al called Fiona, at Wine Works, our new wine supplier, to let her know we were ready to pick up the wine we had ordered from them in January, when we found out that Urban Wine Cellars, from whom we had been buying wine for the past 25 years, had gone belly up.  By law, we have to be at Wine Works for the “corking,” or in our case, the bagging process. Fiona had offered to pick us up at the boat when we were ready for the “corking,” but since Wine Works is near Costco, and we wanted to get a few things, like lemons, avocados, mangos, cherry tomatoes and cashew clusters from Costco, we arranged to have Fiona’s husband, Blair, pick us up at Costco instead of the marina.  This way we only had a one-way bus trip to Costco.  Brilliant.

I got online to get bus schedules and learned that the #20 bus stops right at the marina.  Yay!  The city buses are all new, and the bus drivers are the friendliest.  It took 45 minutes to get to Costco, but it was a lovely spring day, and gorgeous rhododendrons were in full bloom everywhere. When we got off at our stop, at Apple Croft, we only had about a two-block walk to Costco.

We did all our shopping and then had Costco pizza for lunch, while waiting for Blair to arrive to take us to Wine Works for the “corking”.   

We were impressed with the Wine Works facility, and enjoyed visiting with the owners, Fiona and Blair.  The Napa Valley Stags Leap merlot was very good, and they had an excellent selection of balsamic vinegars and flavored olive oils, which they make.  After tasting several of the balsamic vinegars, I wound up buying two:  black walnut and coconut.

When we finally got back to the boat, we celebrated our very productive day with a delicious margarita.