Postscript: There are hard things under the water!

Saturday, July 6, 2024

Before Karen and Martin left Braesail, carrying all their bags and baggage, to catch the ferry to Vancouver, Walt served breakfast muffins and we enjoyed the last shared meal of our trip. Then, at about 10:30 am, we backed away from the Canoe Cove dock and headed out toward open water on a very warm morning.

I was in the starboard bow coiling up the dock-lines when there was a sudden bang, crunch, and hard jolt that knocked me to the deck and relieved me of my cap and glasses. Walt was VERY tired and had misread his chart, thinking that the rock we’d hit was on the other side of the channel! I pulled myself up, retrieved my spectacles and hat, saw that I had only a scrape on the top of my right hand and some bruises on my right forearm, and called out to Walt about the safety of our keel. He said he thought that there was no damage, and he checked the bilges to make sure. A sailboat we’d saluted as they passed us on their way into the marina radioed to see if we were all right and if we needed any help. Walt thanked them and told them that we had bounced off the rock and were safe as far as he could tell.

Our sudden halt had knocked things around a little below-decks, but we found no damage apart from one broken glass jar in the refrigerator. We were on our way again soon; I was feeling shaken in more ways than one, but was also thankful that things weren’t worse!

We were happy to be able to spend about an hour sailing peacefully in a light wind and a favorable current. As we sailed, I saw the small black dorsal fins of a few whales of some kind; we’d seen a fair number of seals (once we spotted a group containing a pup and its mother, all sun bathing on a cluster of rocks), but this was the closest I had come to seeing whales.

Clearance by phone for re-entry into US waters was obtained easily, and by the early afternoon we were making the turn into Garrison Bay and then Westcott Bay on San Juan Island. Big powerboats were zooming right at us, fireworks were going off on one shore, all manner of small speedboats were criss-crossing the waters—we were trying to navigate around all the watercraft and to avoid collisions, we were distracted by the noise and hectic busy-ness after weeks of relative isolation, and we weren’t noticing the read-out from the depth-sounder during a very low tide in a place where Walt expected the water to be deep enough to provide safe passage. But suddenly, the boat jerked to a halt again—we had run aground on a sandbar at six-foot depth!

A motorboat operator who had seen us ground came by to ask if we needed a tow or any other assistance. Walt was in the process of rocking the boat forward, sideways, and backward using the throttle and bow thrusters, and the tide was gradually rising, and so, with that and the wakes from passing boats also helping to raise the water level a bit, an embarrassed Skipper Walt said that we’d be fine and thanked the other boater for his offer of help.

I tried my best to relax and shake off my fear and nervousness, and helped us drop anchor once we were off the sandbar and into slightly deeper water in a quieter, more open part of Westcott Bay. What a day it had been! We launched Coracle with a wine-bag as cargo and motored the short distance to the shore of the bay, climbed out, dragged the dinghy up the beach through the sand and mud and tied it to a barnacle-encrusted rock, put our shoes back on, clambered over drift logs and through the tall shore grass, lacy white wildflowers, and other tideland plants, and finally walked about a mile in a HOT afternoon sun to the outstanding San Juan Island Distillery to sample their ciders (me) and their gins and whiskeys (Walt). We came away with six bottles, a weighty burden that Walt carried back to the beach. We loaded our purchases into the dinghy, shoved it into the shallow water, climbed aboard, and motored back to Braesail. I then spent about an hour sitting on the bathing platform, dangling my legs in the refreshingly cool water, and cleaning the sand and very-gluey mud off our shoes!

We ate a steak dinner on the cockpit table in the fading golden light, discussed better ways to avoid contacting unyielding underwater objects in the future, AND were most grateful for our safety that day as well as for a stellar journey!

Post-Postscript
On Sunday, we motored from Westcott Bay to Anacortes during the afternoon, and I saw more small black fins slicing through the water during the trip. Upon our arrival, we bought diesel fuel and pumped out the holding tank, and docked in our slip. I participated in the online Service of Compline that began over four years ago during the pandemic and that has come to be very significant to the half-dozen regular participants who gather virtually and sing and pray together on Sunday evenings using Jamulus software.

Next, we carted to the shore the items most urgently needed at home in Everett, and Walt drove our Prius from the long-term parking area at the Anacortes Marina to a spot next to the shore gates. We loaded in our gear, but then the car would not start—dead battery! A call to AAA brought a service person about an hour later; we were on the road by about 10:30 pm and home shortly before midnight. Our condo was hot, but all was well otherwise; on Monday we’ll begin our return to “normal life”–circumnavigation of Vancouver Island COMPLETE!