Saturday-Sunday, September 19-20, 2026
A cloudy gray bud of a morning blossomed into another sun-flower day as we enjoyed the silent beauty of our anchoring spot in the Octopus Islands. Walt filled his day with replacement of the wire gate at Braesail’s stern (it opens above the bathing platform) with one made of Dyneema, work on the Spectra (our desalinator—it produces about six gallons per hour of fresh water from saltwater), flying our drone around the photogenic surrounding islands and practicing controlling and retrieving it, and then, having purchased a Canadian fishing license online, motoring off in Coracle with a baited crab-trap to see what he might catch.
I did some cleaning around the boat, hand-washed one of Walt’s shirts, caught up on some reading and email correspondence, and spent a good deal of time editing photos and writing and publishing my blog-post covering Thursday’s and Friday’s activities while sitting in the cozy cockpit and enjoying the ever-changing loveliness of our surroundings as the hours went by.
Since there was, yet again, no wind, our island neighborhood, to which several more boats had been added during the day, was quiet and tranquil; I heard few bird calls, but did see a heron zooming from one island shore to another and shrieking loudly as it flew.
By the end of a pleasant day, we were considering where we might go on Monday or Tuesday, and I was still pondering a mystery I’d encountered: I’d washed a black shirt of Walt’s, squeezed and wrung it out, hung it up for a while to drip, laid it out in a sunny spot in the cockpit for some time until it was only a little damp, and then taken it outside the cockpit and hung it over a side rail, being careful to put most of the shirt’s weight on the inside of the rail, with only a small top portion hanging over the outside of the rail. Some hours later, I’d looked outside the cockpit and—where was the shirt?? There had been no wind and the boat had scarcely moved at all, and I couldn’t think how he shirt might have slipped overboard! Well, it was a lost-and-found shirt, and I hope some fish or octopus found what I lost and is enjoying wearing it!
The Octopus Islands were blessed with another superb day once the Sunday morning overcast was melted into buttery warmth by the sun. Reading and writing in the cockpit, our “sun porch,” was delightful; at one point, a seal’s head poked through the glassy surface of the water nearby, and I was happy to see it and the rings of ripples it generated. All else was still.
Once Walt had made up his bread dough to rise today and tomorrow, we climbed into Coracle with crab bait aboard and with a lovely plaque made from a piece of cedar driftwood that Walt had found on Saturday while out laying our crab trap. He’d smoothed the wood and neatly inscribed upon it “braesail,” the Moody boat-building company’s stylized compass, our names, and the years (2022 and 2026) during which our visits to these islands took place.
Off we went among the islands,
through beautifully clear sapphire-blue, emerald-green, and aquamarine water, and soon arrived at a driftwood-decorated spot on the shore of the privately-owned island on which is located a fascinating “driftwood cabin,” left open to the public by the present owners. Built in the early 1970s by the then-owners of the island (which is not part of the Octopus Islands Provincial Marine Park), this cabin is a remarkable “museum” containing items of all kinds added to the ever-growing collection by mariners from all over who have used odds and ends from their boats or objects found on beaches or in forests to create artwork to leave in the cabin to commemorate their visits. We climbed and clambered over rocks and driftwood and followed the little trail to the cabin,
where Walt found a place among the multitudinous contents of the cabin to hang his creation from a piece of string he’d brought in his pocket.
We both took photos and marveled at the creativity and artistry on display. I signed the slightly damp guestbook, and we made our way back to the shore of the island.
We decided that I’d wait at a spot that was easier to reach on foot than was our landing place, and Walt would come around in Coracle and collect me. As I waited for him,
I could hear the sound of oars squeaking and splashing, and Walt soon appeared around the point. He beached the dinghy on a flat rock surface so that I could come aboard (I lost my balance coming down the rocks and fell, but didn’t do myself any significant damage), and he then began to row toward the spot where he’d left our crab trap on Saturday. Our outboard engine had flooded, Walt couldn’t convince it to start again, and so his upper body received some exercise!
We reached the spot marked by our trap float and Walt pulled up about 100 feet of line with the large circular trap attached at the bottom. The bait was still present, and there were NO CRABS—BUMMER! There WERE, however, about 20 little prawns wriggling about, and Walt grabbed them and plopped them into our plastic bucket—CHEERS! After adding more bait, Walt rowed to a different spot, lowered the trap into the water, and rowed us back to the “Mother Ship” with our catch. After a lovely online Compline service with our friends, Walt added the tiny-but-amazingly-flavorful sea creatures to a delicious”surf-&-turf” (prawns and tri-tip steak) supper—marvelous!
Braesail - A grand yacht in the Salish Sea 