Wednesday, October 15
We were indeed blessed with a third day of superb weather! Walt listened to an online presentation in the morning, and at about 11:30 am we bade farewell to Saysutshun and motored past the Entrance Island light station,
along the eastern shores of Gabriola Island with their massive expanses of sandstone cliffs, and to Page’s Resort and Marina on Silva Bay. We docked at about 1:30 pm and enjoyed browsing the offerings of the well-stocked general store that included groceries, sundries, and supplies; beer and wine; locally-produced baked goods, arts and crafts, and gifts; and a large collection of books by island authors. We treated ourselves to a huge “everything cookie” containing oatmeal, raisins, dried cranberries, dates, nuts, and chocolate chips—YUMM!
While Walt worked on our autopilot to try to get it to follow a plotted track as well as a compass course, I took our rubbish and recycling up to the bins near the store and then wandered around the lovely grounds of the resort. I observed a basketball hoop and a tether ball stand; a building containing restrooms and showers; an attractive lawn area containing pear and apple trees with a BBQ, picnic tables, and lawn chairs scattered about;
many neat campsites with level spaces where tents could rest on a pillowy mat of moss and grass and with a picnic table for each site; and hedges of blackberry vines from which I picked a few late berries.
On my way back to the docks after my explorations, I decided to try out the restrooms, but noticed the sound of forcefully running water coming from the ladies’ room when I approached it. I waited for a time, and then a woman, wrapped in a towel and with an electric toothbrush hanging out of her mouth, burst out of the room to warn me that she couldn’t turn off the hot water in the shower and it was running full-force and was VERY hot—she thought she was being boiled and scalded! She told me to use the toilet if I wanted to, but to avoid the shower (our two nice showers on Braesail make it unnecessary for us to use—and pay for—on-shore showers). By the time I had finished in the toilet stall, the woman had somehow managed to shut off the steaming shower—whew!! I asked her if she was all right and if she was going to tell someone about the problem, but she said no, that everyone was so kind and friendly that she didn’t want to bother them about the shower.
My father managed a large church camp for over 40 years, and this was the sort of problem that he and the camp staff he managed had to deal with, and I knew that he would have wanted to know about the difficulty, so I reported it to the gentleman in the store. He was indeed glad that I had told him about the malfunction, saying that this happens from time to time—the shower control handle spins around and doesn’t control the flow or its temperature the way it should. So, having done my “good deed for the day,” I thanked the folks in the store for their work to make Page’s a very lovely resort, and returned to Braesail,
where Walt was doing HIS good deed by helping a large incoming boat to dock safely.
After a supper featuring kale soup and toast, we read, wrote, and listened to choral music before ending another stellar autumn day in the Canadian Gulf Islands.
Braesail - A grand yacht in the Salish Sea 