Monday, October 6
A spectacularly beautiful fall day began with my doing last-minute cleaning, plant-watering, and packing and Walt’s visiting the local post office because of the foul-up with our mail-hold (no solution—an upstairs neighbor will collect our mail for the next while!). Our drive to the Anacortes Marina was lovely, and soon we were dragging our bags down the dock in shore carts and heaving them onto the boat, probably for the last time from this location!
After storing all the food onboard and completing a few additional tasks, I cast off Braesail’s dock-lines shortly after noon and Walt began the three-plus-hour motoring journey to the Deer Harbor; I drove to the Anacortes Ferry Terminal to get in line for the 3:20 pm sailing to Shaw and Orcas islands and spent the waiting time reading and doing German exercises. The ferry ride couldn’t have been more beautiful, and I spent some time outside on the stern deck admiring the long lacy train of the boat’s wake, less time on the deck at the bow (the wind was quite cold there!) enjoying the island scenery, and the rest of the hour-long trip looking out the picture windows to the northeast.
By about 4:30, I was driving from the ferry dock in Orcas Village to the Deer Harbor Marina, up and down hills and around sharp bends through the gorgeous Orcas Island countryside, through deep green forests and past trees bursting with pears and apples, storybook farms and gardens, pastures edged with red-and-gold-streaked deciduous trees where sheep and cattle grazed, level wetlands and hilly groves with peek-a-boo water views, meadows and orchards sloping down to the sea, some rustic cabins and some elegant “country houses,” the late-1800s Crow Valley School Museum, and some attractive tourist accommodations, and into the village of Deer Harbor,
not far from which a tawny, bright-eyed deer darted out of the brush and ran alongside the road for a short distance (no close encounter—whew!). Because the brilliant sun blinded me once or twice as I came to intersections and turns, I inadvertently gave myself a longer and more-wide-ranging scenic tour of the island than I’d intended, and didn’t meet Walt at the marina until 5 pm.
He’d had an uneventful trip and had docked the boat in her new slip, D-19. After putting away clothing, parts, tools, and supplies, we heated frozen steak-and-stout pies in the oven, took care of email, enjoyed supper and some sailing videos, and went to bed a little early after a very full day!
Braesail - A grand yacht in the Salish Sea 