What to do and how to do it?

Thursday, May 30, 2024

Most of Thursday’s energy was devoted to figuring out what to do about replacing Walt’s MacBook laptop and our defunct chart-plotter. Web research, text messages, phone calls, thought, and discussion led at last to the formulation of a plan, and we will see how events unfold.

We motored in still, sun-shimmered air from placid Walsh Cove, where I finally detected the spot on the shore from which a chattering stream splashed over the rocks beneath the overhanging evergreens, and in which I could see the bottom of the cove through the clear emerald water, to Refuge Cove about 15 miles away. We swung through the harbor area there to see if any of the seasonal businesses were open (they weren’t), enjoyed our little tour, and went on our way.

Another half-hour of motoring brought us to Squirrel Cove, a large space in which a number of boats were already resting at anchor on water so smooth that the boats appeared to be models placed on a sheet of green glass. We anchored easily and spent most of the afternoon and evening catching up on tasks for which decent connectivity was necessary and making plans for the next several days.

After much deliberation, we decided to try to moor at the government dock in Okeover Inlet (on the eastern side of the Malaspina Peninsula, opposite Lund) on Friday night, have a rental car delivered to us from the town of Powell River on Saturday morning, and travel back to our Everett home via car and two ferries on Saturday afternoon and evening. Walt can’t get a new laptop until mid-June, and so he’ll wait to order it until our return from our travels in early July, and he will use his tablet with a small keyboard and his smartphone instead, but he CAN pick up a new chart-plotter in Seattle this weekend (he’s been using the charts on his tablet as we’ve traveled during the past two days, but we need to have the “real device” with all its features for safe travels to Haida Gwaii and along the West Coast of Vancouver Island). We plan to spend Saturday night in our condo (I can do laundry and assemble some items we’ve decided we’d like to have aboard), and Walt can drive to Seattle to collect the new chart-plotter on Sunday morning. We will then reverse course and travel back to Braesail by car and the two ferries. Whew! It’s a lot of time, travel, and expense to replace this vital piece of navigation equipment (and yes, we have charts on our phones, Walt’s tablet, and on paper), but we don’t have any safe choice apart from abandoning the remainder of our trip, which we are loath to do.

After a tranquil afternoon and evening of reading , editing photos, and blog-post-writing, Walt crawled into bed and I climbed out onto the deck to observe a black-satin sky strewn with glittering stars—I was even able to see, for the first time in AGES, a little of the misty Milky Way pouring across the midnight sky! There was still a faint glow of light at the northwestern horizon, and trees on the cove’s shores were discernible. The air was silent and the water’s surface was silky, but I could hear soft splashing where the waters of the cove and the reversing tidal lagoon at its edge flow back and forth as the tides rise and fall. What a blessed night!