Today was the nicest day in a while. It was sunny and windy. It took a couple hours for the wind to decide to play, but it finally did, which left us a couple hours to sail across the strait. It was a very pleasant day.
We checked in with customs in Port Angels. We were supposed to use their customs clearing app, CBPROAM, which allows them to inspect your boat from the comfort of their desk by asking you to take them on a video tour of your boat using your phone.
I forgot about all that, tied up to the customs dock and tried to use the phone handset on the dock to get them to clear me. When the phone didn't work, I was undeterred. I looked up their digits and called with my own phone.
But that forced the customs officer to get out of his chair, put on his jacket, and walk down to the dock to inspect Quijote in person and he was not happy about it.
When he got down to the boat, the first words out of his mouth were clear indicators of his mind set and it wasn't customs. "Do you have CBPROAM on your phone?"
"Uhh... Now that you mention it... I used it a couple years ago, but forgot to this time. "
He looked at me for a beat without saying anything. Looked at the boat. He was probably trying to decide how best to make me suffer. In the end he cleared us without comment.
The problem from the officer's perspective is that Quijote has lifelines with no gate. He had no way to board without going over the lifelines. But the man was no athlete, so after making the walk, he chose not to climb onto the boat and instead took our word for it that we were not trafficking sex slaves. He never did get on the boat. It's his job is to look into every corner to make sure we have no stowaways or other illegal cargo, but he couldn't be bothered going over the lifelines.
Note to self: Don't try to transport slaves in a boat with gated lifelines.
After "clearing" customs, we took showers sold the slaves, and walked to dinner for pizza and beer.
Early (daylight) start tomorrow.
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