A river cruise is a new animal for us, and after only a few days on the river we're already trying to find our new rhythm. Our last coastal cruise it took us a few weeks to get into a cadence that worked for us. After some trial and error, it seemed that spending a couple of weeks or a little more "out" at various anchorages followed by about 3 to 5 days in a marina to re-provision as well as get the easy marina life with easy electricity, water and shore access worked best for us.
It looks like the river will impose a different approach. Today we decided that we'd stay put in Cascade Locks Marina, a "day off" from our vacation if you will! Still, it turned out to be a much busier day than expected, with us working on the shower sump pump filter and hose, and refilling one of our 2 propane gas bottles we have for cooking.
We did find time for a burger and local salmon at a busy restaurant. They kindly welcomed us on a large dog friendly terrace where we ended up surrounded by dogs at every table. All were well behaved, and it was a fun place.
Back to our propane: Enfin has 2 propane bottles in a dedicated cockpit locker. That locker is built specially and is vented in accordance with yacht construction rules. There is a remote solenoid in the locker, controlled from the galley, that open and shuts the gas supply to the cooking range and oven.
A led indicator above the range as well as the directional switch provide a visual confirmation of the solenoid's state. We chant to ourselves after cooking "off, off, off, off", putting our fingers on each knob and on the solenoid's switch to ensure we don't leave anything in an open position.
In reality marina days are often the most active, since that's when we can catch up on shopping on small maintenance items. So do we need marina time off after landing in a marina? Probably, though we'll still explore what works this time around.
One thing we can never have a day off: Walking Princess. But that's always such a fun activity that we never mind.
We're likely off to our next destination tomorrow, and we'll continue to re-assess how far and how fast we want to push as we get to understand river cruising better.