FUN WITH STERN-TYING: Tuesday, July 26

We left Annette Inlet on Tuesday morning at about 10 am and motored from Prevost Island to Wallace Island (the island is a marvelous marine park!), and I was at the helm, finding, yet again, that I have a gigantic amount to learn about being on and handling Braesail! We arrived at about noon, but it took us a LONG time to set the boat’s anchor and then tie a line from the stern to a chain in the rock face at one side of Princess Cove because Walt had forgotten to bring stern-tying line and he had to piece together a sufficiently long line out of three shorter sections. This was his first attempt on Braesail to stern-tie (an operation involving rowing a dinghy from a boat to a spot on the shore where a line can be tied from the boat’s stern to a ring, rock, stump, branch, tree trunk, etc., on the shore to hold the boat in place so that it doesn’t swing around while at anchor in a small space), and he got the line and anchor chain angles a bit wrong; as a result, we had to pull up and move the anchor and re-attach the stern line to keep the boat from drifting backward into the rocks that lined the cove’s shore. Once the boat was secure, Walt attached the outboard motor to the inflatable dinghy, and he and Joy and I went riding around the cove—great fun! We saw a good number of plump sea lions lazing on the rocks like fat, furry, whiskered sausages, and there were several chubby pups too! After a kind couple helped us out of the dinghy at one of the small docks in the cove, Joy and I spent an hour walking the beautiful forested trail along the bluff above the cove where we’d secured our boat, making our way to the head of the cove and looking down through the trees to the glittering open ocean on one side and to the smooth green waters of the cove on the other (see the photo above of Braesail stern-tied with Walt in the dinghy working on the outboard motor). Walt grilled huge juicy hamburgers for dinner after doing some work on the outboard motor to adjust the too-high idling speed, and after cleanup we prepared for Wednesday’s journey through the Dodd Narrows to Nanaimo on the east coast of Vancouver Island, where we planned to visit with Jacquie, a long-time friend who lives to the north, and bring Martin (arriving by ferry from Vancouver, BC) aboard for several days.