Lund

There is not a whole lot of Egmont; so, suffice it to say that we were there, got fuel and water, and left the next day. That is not to say that the area isn’t beautiful. It just suffers in comparison to its neighbors.

We both slept a little later than the past few nights and were up a 0630. Our habit is to get underway, NOW, breakfast and other things to be done on the water. The usual boat pulling along the dock to get away from an obstruction safely and we were off at 0700.

BC Ferries are ubiquitous here, each plying a single route, many between tiny places and even tinier places. Carol thought that a picture was important; here it is.

It is the nature of cruising that there are two places: where you are and wanted to be but no longer to; and, where you want to be next. In between are transits and passages, almost always tedious and tiring. In fact, they were the root reason that we sold the boat; I just decided that I could not do the 24, 48, 72 and 96 hour stretches required to go where we wanted. Today was no different. An eight-hour slog through tidal currents on the bow, slow going, not very interesting.

Keeping a sailboat in peak condition is hard; doing it for a charter seems to be even harder. We had another problem we identified. It has been difficult to recover the furling main the few times that we have used it. That just seemed to us to be idiosyncratic. On the trip back to Egmont Carol noticed that the base, at right-angle of the sail, was flapping about. This is seriously not supposed to happen. There is a loop at the base of a furling mainsail that goes over an inverted hook, hard to explain, but they all work that way. The loop had come off the sail and I pulled it part of it from inside the mast. I called the charter company to let them know that they would need a sail maker for the repair. Carol and I can work around this without too much trouble, we think. If we lose ½-knot when under sail, we’ll never notice.

I had wanted to stay in a harbor called Lund, a small community with an old hotel and restaurant that I thought Carol might enjoy. When we called in the morning there was no room at the inn. This led to one of the more interesting exercises. If we couldn’t stay in Lund, we needed some place to park the boat for the night. Michael, at the charter company had loaded us up with paper charts, which I thought would be useless. I dug one out and found the Copeland Islands Marine Park, a place that had never come up in all my research of the area. Underway, I went on Google Earth and got the exact lon/lat of the anchorage. While I was doing this Microsoft was updating my windows program. A connected world.

Eight hours later, as we approached Lund, we called again and there was room, so we are moored there. Ironically, Carol decided against eating out. Should have gone to the Copeland Islands.

Boat handling can occasionally be challenging, Since the beginning of time boats with pointy ends have had two sides. Different languages, different times, one concept, two sides. In today’s parlance: port and starboard. This has led to some confusion aboard this boat, so we have come up with a novel solution: four sides. We have retained the old, reliable standards of port and starboard. In order to clarify we have added the “other port” and the “other starboard.” Our boat handling communication has improved about 100%. Now, there is no confusion.

The weather has been not as expected: way too nice. I have been shirtless on several occasions, and I am in CANADA, the great white North. This does not compute. Nice weather, no wind. In fact, we seem to have entered a wind-free zone. Another day of glassy water. The barometer has dropped a bit, but the pressure is still high. Last night some “mare’s tail” clouds came through; these are usually a precursor of something on the way. But today broke fairly clear. I’m not sure that the diesel heater works so I have no complaints.

We have not decided where to go tomorrow; wherever that might be, almost certainly we will be off the grid. We’re both a little tired so we may gunk-hole for a day or more to rest up.