Winter banished our spring-y weather as predicted, visited the tops of the hills around the Port Sidney Marina during Saturday night, and left a light powdering of white on the trees and more on the clear-cut areas. Walt and I awoke to icy drizzle, and taking trash and recycling to the bins near the marina offices and then hauling fenders onto the decks and neatening the mooring lines after we cast off at about 9 am nearly numbed my fingers (I don’t like handling lines while wearing gloves).
Our 2.5-hr. journey to the Maple Bay Yacht Club’s guest dock in Bird’s Eye Cove provided beautiful, though cloud-veiled, views of high, rocky, wooded bluffs draped in the yellow-green of newly-leafing trees and thick mosses, with new snow visible at the higher elevations.
The rain outside the cockpit and the breathing of two people inside made for poor visibility through the front windscreens, and I got plenty of exercise wiping the moisture from the windows as we motored.
Docking was straightforward despite the frigid weather (more frozen fingers!), and when the sun stopped by Maple Bay in the afternoon and the rain went on break, we walked to the yacht club’s well-appointed main building and registered our presence at the bar. We were pleasantly surprised by the splashing music of a nearby waterfall that accompanied our dock-strolling.
Back on board the boat, Walt undertook and successfully completed the nasty but necessary task of cleaning the sensor in our 30-gallon holding tank so that the amount of sewage therein registers correctly, and we know when we need to pump out (before the “red light of doom” begins to glow on the liquid level indicator in the forward head!).
Showers and sun breaks came and went during the remainder of a quiet, typically “Aprillian” day. We shared Evening Prayer for Palm Sunday after supper, and planned our upcoming travels over cups of hot chocolate.
Braesail - A grand yacht in the Salish Sea 