Thursday-Friday, October 1-2, 2026
We didn’t sleep particularly well on Wednesday night because all was completely still—apart from at least two dogs, probably somewhere on shore and not on the surrounding boats, that continued to bark most of the night. Drippy drizzle began to fall in mid-morning as we prepared to leave Gerrans Bay
and motor to Smuggler Cove Provincial Marine Park about 10 miles away. Walt called John Henry’s Marina and Resort to check on the availability of propane for refilling tanks, and was very pleased to find that it was available there—success at last!—and so we stopped at their colorful newly-opened fuel dock
before leaving Pender Harbour’s complex of smaller coves and bays, many, like Gerrans Bay, surrounded by quite a variety of attractive cottages and large and imposing houses of all styles, often with floats and docks and ramps to shore, and usually containing little marinas and other facilities for boaters.
While we motored for about an hour and a half beneath pewter skies and over smooth, equally gray seas (no sunshine today on the “Sunshine Coast”!), Walt did a bit of work in the bow on the anchor where it is connected to the chain, and glued a mount for our little plastic air-circulating fan near the forward windscreen in the cockpit, while I stood watch (“St. Brendan,” our autopilot, was at the helm). We found only one other boat in beautiful, well-sheltered, complex Smuggler Cove (the maze of rocks, nooks, and islets, bordered by wooded shores, provided excellent cover, it is said, for those smuggling Chinese laborers and liquor, probably from Texada Island, into the US), and we located a suitable anchoring spot near a stern-tie pin in a rock with no trouble.
Showers came and went throughout the afternoon, and I enjoyed being in the cockpit, reading, writing, and napping, while listening to the tapping of the raindrops on the enclosure’s roof and watching their wet fingers draw little circles on the glassy surface of the surrounding water. German exercises, supper, galley clean-up, and more reading and video-watching occupied our evening on a mostly-relaxing day, and we don’t think that our sleep will be disturbed by barking dogs tonight!
Thursday night WAS perfectly silent, and morning brought more cloudy skies to Smuggler Cove. Walt spent most of Friday working on his laptop on a system that will allow him to configure the displays of his electrical systems (battery status, charging, etc.) and tank levels (fresh water and waste water) the way that works best for him. He also made a very good yeast dough that he used for pizza crust in the evening.
I climbed into the cockpit as a few stray sunbeams made their way into it and warmed it to a pleasant level. As I wrote email, read articles, and visited on Zoom with my brother and his wife in Illinois, two more boats entered the anchorage and stern-tied, small groups of people gathered at the top of the hillside opposite us and seemed to be listening to talks of some sort, and I enjoyed the bird-life in our portion of the cove. The call of one bird sounded like someone knocking three times on a door and then doing it again and again; another sounded like the hooting of an owl; other sounds were of a twittering/chirping nature. I watched a water-bird (perhaps a common murre) that looked like a little penguin paddling around the anchorage, sometimes fluttering its wings and splashing and rising up on its feet, sometimes diving briefly below the surface.
After an increasingly cloudy but windless afternoon,
we spent our evening engaging in our usual activities and prepared for an 8 am departure for the Burrard Yacht Club in Vancouver on Saturday, a journey that will take us about 6.5 hours if we motor at about 6 kts. (will the wind continue its extended absence?). It had been a tranquil, enjoyable day!
