Sunday, September 28
Saturday night was wonderfully calm and quiet, we slept well, and Walt and I had a pleasant 15-minute walk from the docks to the lovely “carpenter gothic” building housing the Anglican Church of St. Michael and All Angels, who were celebrating their patronal festival. The church’s rector is the Rev. Dr. Norman Knowles (!) who has a good deal in common with Walt in addition to titles and surname; the nave was quite full of people of all ages; the hymns were well-chosen, well-played, and heartily sung; the sermon about the nature and significance of angels was very good, and we received a very warm welcome.
We’d decided to leave the Chemainus dock as soon as we could after the church service in order to arrive before dark in Centre Bay on Gambier Island near Vancouver, where friends of our son Martin’s have a beautiful home and a dock and a workshop available to us, so we regretfully declined the church’s kind invitation to join them for a celebratory potluck. We returned to Braesail after a quick stop at the Island Pastry Haus to pick up a few treats, and made the six-hour voyage through some islands and then across the Strait of Georgia with no challenges.
Skies and seas were soft and silver-blue-gray, and there was enough wind to allow us to sail for a little more than hour, quite a treat after many hours of motoring over the previous two weeks!
Martin and his girlfriend Karen arrived at the docks in Centre Bay just after we did (they’d motored from Martin’s sailboat Sagres’ home-port on nearby Bowen Island) at about 7 pm, we shared a wonderful dinner and conversation on Braesail as the predicted rain increased, and retired for the night at about 11 pm. I love having our two boats and our family together again after many months!
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Walt and Martin will be designing and building a new cover for Sagres’ new engine over the upcoming week, using the some of the tools and the excellent workshop belonging to Martin’s friends, who own the docks at which we are presently moored. Walt and I will find a safe place in which Braesail can stay while we drive to Everett on Saturday, probably in a rental car, so that we can attend the service at St. Philip’s Episcopal Church in Marysville (where Walt is a volunteer pastoral associate), on October 5, at which our diocesan bishop will be present. After doing a few chores at home and collecting a few items, we will return to the Vancouver area on Sunday night or Monday, move back onto Braesail, and continue our explorations until we decide to bring the boat back to her “new home” in Deer Harbor on Orcas Island in the San Juans, and to return to our Everett condo. I’ll continue to write blog-posts once Braesail is out traveling on the water again.
Braesail - A grand yacht in the Salish Sea 