Deep in a small bay

Wednesday-Thursday, September 9-10

It’s a great thing when a yacht club’s laundry facilities are large and in good condition, are reasonably priced ($3 per load to wash and $2 to dry for 40 minutes), and actually do what needs to be done (dry a medium laundry load completely). I spent about two hours on Wednesday morning processing three weeks’-worth of laundry (I had to wait for loads that were in the machines before I arrived to finish their cycles). By the time I’d completed the job and was back on Braesail, Walt was ready to cast off the lines, to allow a large power boat that had been waiting for a spot on the dock to take ours, and to begin a four-hour motoring trip over slightly-ruffled water to scenic, secluded Deep Bay on Jedediah island, all of which is a B.C. Provincial Marine Park that we’ve visited before and enjoyed greatly.

Braesail’s wind-speed-and-direction sensor wasn’t working, but we could tell that there wasn’t much wind and that what little there was was blowing straight over our bow, making it of no use for sailing. So we enjoyed a pleasant, uneventful journey to Deep Bay, traveling, near Jedediah Island, through relatively narrow Bull Passage, with its towering granite walls of charcoal gray and chocolate brown streaked with black, white, and various ochres, and tufted with dry, greenish-cream mosses and grasses. Once in the bay, we were presented with some stern-tying challenges in making certain that our anchor was firmly embedded in the bay’s bottom, that our stern was not too close to one rock wall and that our bow was not too near another, and that Braesail was at a safe distance from the only other boat in the small anchorage. After our anchor seemed secure, Walt rowed Coracle to the rock face behind us, and with our stern line threaded through one link in a chain fastened into the rock (one of about a dozen stern-tying anchoring points around the bay), he returned and we tied both ends of the line to cleats at the back of the boat. Task completed!

While Walt was napping, some shy clouds shed a short shower into the bay, and I was able to photograph a faint rainbow arching above the gold-tipped tree tops on the eastern shore of the anchorage.

I stayed in the cockpit while Walt prepared supper, and enjoyed taking pictures as the brushes of the sinking sun and sleepy zephyrs painted the sky with quickly-changing puffs, swirls, streaks, feathers, and beaded chains of color. Another gift at the end of another fine day!

A warm, beautifully sunny Thursday followed a somewhat noisy, bouncy night due to the wind and small waves that swayed the boat and that bumped Coracle against Braesail’s stern. I woke at about 4 am and was treated to a marvelous view of the star-strewn sky when I glanced out the window on my way back to bed from the aft-head. It was a work-day for Walt, who cut apart a frayed dock line and stitched a large loop in the end of one piece to extend its useful life, and who then spent the rest of the day installing a fan in the ceiling of the main cabin, and a “cigarette-lighter” outlet for a small portable fan and two charging ports for electronic devices in the cockpit arch above the companionway ladder. I engaged in my usual writing and reading activities and took a nap on one of the adjustable lounge-cushions in the sunny cockpit in the early afternoon, but I somehow managed to scrunch my left shoulder into a painful knot that took some time to untie! I was able to help a bit with Walt’s tasks, and I helped with post-project clean-up and dinner preparations as the western sky shaded into a dusky violet. I worked on this post and hoped for a more peaceful night!