Motoring for a sunset with a drone

My son (also a Tim) flew out from Colorado the week leading up to Memorial Day weekend. He and I spent much of the week a few hours south, visiting with my Mother while Kerri stayed on Meriwether by herself. I am not sure what she does in her alone-time but I think it has something to do with cocktails while binge-listening to NPR. It was only the final two days that Tim and I returned to Bellingham to take a day-sail on his final full day in town – which happened to fall on Memorial Day.

With the extremely late setting of the sun this time of the year, this far north, we all decided to jump out on the water for the sun set the evening before our big sail. The winds were nearly nonexistent and it would stay that way for the night. With a couple hours of daylight left, we motored our old boat out of the marina to anchor a mile or so away, just like last time. This would mark our first time that we had a passenger onboard, which means I could hand the helm off to someone else and sit back to relax a spell.

With the anchor dropped and drinks drunk all around (my son turned 21 two weeks prior) Tim pulled out his drone which kept us boys fully occupied as Kerri and the sun did their respective things. This would be the first, and possibly the only, time we would be able to get photos (and video, coming soon) of Meriwether from this perspective so we went to town with the drone for as long as we could.

Once the sun finished setting we had only 30 minutes or so of light left and I desperately did not want to attempt docking in the dark. We quickly cranked up the motor, hauled anchor, and high-tailed it back into the marina where the docking was made super easy thanks to the wind staying out of it for a change. It was closing in on 10PM by the time we finished up, so we all called it a night to rest up for the longer day on the water the next day.