Saturday, October 11
The “thunder” of the wood processing operations had disappeared by midnight, and, after a decent sleep, Walt and I rose at about 8 am beneath the gray gaze of rain-laden clouds and began our very-hilly two-mile hike to “old-town” Ladysmith. The 40-minute walk was quite lovely, but the route climbed steeply from the guest docks to the town on the bluff above, and we paused a few times to rest and drink in the cool, damp air and to be glad that it was NOT actually raining!
We DID find the famous Old Town Bakery, a place so popular that the line for pastry-purchase wound out the door and along the walk, and the line for drinks stretched through the eatery toward the door. What a mouth-watering array of breads, pies, pastries, cookies, and five varieties of cinnamon buns greeted us when we’d waited through the line and entered the shop! The woman in line behind me struck up an entertaining conversation with me, and we enjoyed our visit while we waited to buy a pumpkin-spice cinnamon bun (her choice) and a blackberry-apple-ginger cinnamon bun (mine). Walt shared my terrific bun (whole blackberries poked out of the crust here and there!) and bought two sausage rolls and an almond cinnamon bun for us to bring back to the boat. We were very happy we’d made the hike (a round-trip of four miles)!
The return walk, being mostly downhill, was much easier and a little quicker, and after a nice conversation with a boating couple looking for information about finding marinas that offer reciprocal moorage privileges for yacht club members, we cast off Braesail’s lines at noon and headed for Newcastle Island, a marine park located a short distance from the city of Nanaimo on Vancouver Island’s eastern shore. Occasional rain spurts and splatters accompanied us on our three-hour journey, and as we approached Dodd Narrows, where currents can run swiftly at times other than slack, a headwind swept over us and small, lacy white caps appeared on the excited little waves hurrying toward us. Though it was hard to see ahead through the raindrops on our windscreen, our passage through the narrows was uneventful, and by about 3 pm we were tying up the boat at one of the docks on Newcastle Island as the wind sighed and sidled away and sunlight soaked the island park.
I rested and read for some time in the warm cockpit, enjoying the views of the island’s shores above the docks to my left and then seeing, through a flock of boats, the towers of the city of Nanaimo to my right. Walt began to prepare lettuce soup for supper (it was EXCELLENT!) and I took a short walk up the path from the docks to the onshore restrooms as the setting sun gilded the forested hilltops to the west. I admired the sculpted shore boulders, the thunderbird-topped totem pole guarding the registration booth, the large cedar and oak trees lining the path, and the view to the east across the Strait of Georgia to the misty B.C. Coastal Mountains, and noticed a flock of Canada geese having a grassy supper not far from the shore as I made my way back to Braesail.
Dinner being over and galley clean-up accomplished, I settled down to write this post, Walt watched some videos and then began to read, and we listened to a fine recording of a Ravel opera before ending our day.
Braesail - A grand yacht in the Salish Sea 