For me, the highlight of our Wednesday motoring trip from Klemtu to Haíɫzaqv was the amazing display of surf crashing and exploding on rocks as we traveled. As swells rolled onto reefs, they became foaming “breakers” that swept onto and ran along rocks, surged into holes and crevices, poured back out, and collided with incoming waves, creating huge geysers of spray–a dazzling “sea show!” Braesail was too far away from the rocks and shores and was rolling back and forth in the swells, making photography impossible, I’m afraid.
We motored from our lovely anchorage in Clothes Bay (where an otter popped above the water’s surface briefly to say good-bye) to the Kitasoo village of Klemtu on Wednesday morning (August 31) and filled our fuel tank (I loved seeing the many purple and orange sea stars clinging to the pilings and chains). The tank opening is in the middle of the cockpit floor, and the pump read-out was across the dock and hard to see, so Walt was thinking that the read-out was measuring in tenths of liters instead of whole liters and let the tank over-fill, splashing diesel fuel around the cockpit. The fuel dock didn’t have any “oil sorbs” for clean-up, so I brought out all the absorbent pads I could find and we sopped up the fuel (which is still scenting the cockpit–yuck!). At least, the water wasn’t contaminated!
We then climbed up the steep ramp to shore, disposed of the fuel-soaked sorbs, and did a bit of shopping in the Kitasoo Band store. As we left the fuel dock, we could see a woolly wall of fog ahead, and prepared our horn, running lights, and radar accordingly.
Fortunately, the fog thinned as we motored through it, and we encountered clear, sunny areas alternating with fog patches for most our 36-mile, 6-hour trip past the attractive Ivory Island lighthouse to Haíɫzaqv (the marine service center formerly called Shearwater).
We met our boating friends, Tom and Michelle, who’d arrived on their sailboat Paraiso at the Haíɫzaqv dock ahead of us, and we shared a good dinner and conversation at the dockside pub before gathering our laundry and making use of the center’s fine washing facilities while continuing to chat. We will stay in touch as we travel, and hope to meet in person again; they’ll be returning to their home in the Portland, OR, area at about the same time–late October/early November–that we plan to be back in Everett. We enjoyed the sunset over the harbor and being able to see some of the brighter stars in a fog-free sky as we transported our laundry and planned Thursday’s travels.
Braesail - A grand yacht in the Salish Sea 