Falling water everywhere! (And a cascade of words, too!)

FOG! If there’s one meteorological phenomenon that’s more dreaded by and dangerous to sailors than any other, it’s probably fog, even with radar and all the electronic navigation aids available. Being unable to see one’s surroundings in a white-out is truly terrifying when one is on the water. So when we awoke on Friday morning and could barely make out the shapes of the boats on the other side of the 10-ft.-wide dock, we thought seriously about staying in Lagoon Cove for another day! Fortunately, the cloud that had descended upon us began to lift quite soon, and by the time we had completed our morning tasks and travel preparations, the mist had disappeared and had unveiled a glorious, sunny morning after three full days of almost continuous rain!

Just before we were ready to untie Braesail’s mooring lines, one of the marina owners stopped by and asked if we would like two large, freshly-caught, live crabs! OF COURSE we would! Walt dipped some sea water into a five-gallon bucket and she dropped the crabs into it–what a terrific dinner we would have!

At about 10 am, we motored away from Lagoon Cove and toward awe-inspiring Kwatsi Bay, one of my favorite places, where we had anchored beneath soaring, cascade-laced cliffs in 2017 and watched an amazingly athletic water ballet performed by a troupe of dolphins! It was wonderful to be traveling in sunshine along calm, forest-lined waterways above which sky-piercing peaks, wrapped in glistening white snow-shawls, played “peak-a-boo” with billowing cumulus clouds!

We were the only vessel in spacious, breathtaking, waterfall-laced Kwatsi Bay

and chose to anchor near about 600 feet of shoreline over and out of which snow-melt trickled and splashed over rocks and gravel into the bay and filled the air with watery whispering, chattering, and chuckling.

We could look around and above us at the silvery ribbons of some half-dozen cataracts that wound among the wooded mountain slopes and tumbled down the granite cliff faces from thousands of feet above the water.

After we’d anchored, Walt rowed Coracle, with one end of our stern-tying line fastened to it, over to the shore and wrapped the line over a large log before rowing back and tying both ends of the line to cleats on either side of the stern. With Braesail thus secured, Walt efficiently dispatched the crabs, steamed them, and served them with lemon-herb-butter as the centerpiece of a fantastic feast! What an unexpected blessing!!

During the evening, without any connectivity to allow us to do online research or to receive and write email (or make blog posts!), we read BOOKS and worked on planning Saturday’s journey to Simoom Sound. Such trip planning requires making reference to wind and weather information (obtained via radio), printed guides to the times, heights, and strengths of daily tides and currents, maps showing water depths and various navigation hazards, and several cruising guides that provide information about spots in which one might spend the night: their history, the safest approaches to them, any special features and/or services provided, and the best places in which to drop anchor if one is not tying up at a dock. A good project to engage me as the day faded into a chilly, mountain-hugged night.