Tuesday-Wednesday, October 13-14, 2026
The clouds spent Monday night and all of Tuesday lowering and lolling about over the hilltops, but delivered only tentative sprinkles of rain. After a wonderfully calm night, Walt and I raised the anchor in Genoa Bay (it brought up such glugs of mud that Walt used the wash-down pump and hose in the bow to see if he could actually see the chain!) and motored off, at about 9:30 am, toward Royal Cove on Portland Island, which was given to Princess Margaret in 1958 to commemorate her visit to British Columbia. Princess Margaret returned the island to the province in 1967, and it then became a provincial park that is now a part of Gulf Islands National Park Reserve.
There was almost no wind, and the air was very cool but not COLD, and with heat being channeled into the cockpit from the engine, we were quite comfortable. I enjoyed seeing the fall color that splashed over the wooded shores of Vancouver Island as we traveled, but all else was gray, grayer, and grayest.
By 11:30 we were scouting lovely Royal Cove to find a good spot for anchor-dropping and stern-tying as the only boat present. Having found a likely place to “drop hook,” we motored away again to a location where the water was about 200 feet deep, and while Braesail floated contentedly on the sea’s rippled surface, Walt put bait (“prawn candy”) into the appropriate box in our crab/prawn trap, attached a line, and lowered it over the boat’s side, using a special reel he’d bought at a boat show. Deployment took some time, but once Walt was satisfied that the trap was resting on the sea bottom, we returned to Royal Cove, anchored with no trouble (it’s great when yours is the only boat in the anchorage!), and then stern-tied with only minimal difficulty (my part in the process went better than it had on our previous attempt, but it was still not as well-executed as it should be).
We enjoyed a partly-sunny afternoon, and I especially liked looking through the gap between the point of land at the end of Royal Cove’s shore and that of nearby Chads Island as B.C. ferries of varying sizes traveled back and forth between Vancouver and Vancouver Island,
their wakes sending little foamy waves dancing up on and around the rocks that lined the shores. The cove was very quiet apart from the occasional hissing and gurgling of these small waves around the rocks and Braesail’s hull, and the cries of gulls, eagles, herons, and other neighborhood birds.
Walt had a good time sending up our drone to survey the forested island and the pale-sand-and-driftwood beaches at its edges and to look down at Braesail far below floating on the azure water, and then getting the drone to land safely on the top of the aft cabin. Useful practice!
Many years ago when we were anchored in this cove, I was treated one night to the view of a large ferry, with all its onboard lights glittering, slipping out from behind one point of land and gliding along toward the other point as if a glowing fairytale castle were drifting through the dark for a brief time and then vanishing from view. I never forgot those magical moments, and I was able to enjoy a similar experience on this night as a B.C. ferry floated through the velvety darkness at the end of the day—a special gift.
A silent, cloud-shrouded Tuesday night led to another gray morning, and we left Royal Cove at about 10:30 to see if we’d trapped any prawns. It took a long time for Walt to retrieve the trap for various reasons, and when it was finally on board, we saw that it contained only nine prawns of moderate size, but these would contribute to a good supper.
What little wind there was soon died away, but the morning clouds began to dissipate after noon, and the day continued to brighten as we motored back toward the US-Canada border.
It took us about two-and-a-half hours to reach the waters around Patos Island in the San Juans, and we were able to gain readmission to the US via phone with only a short wait and a quick Zoom interview.
Since our purchase of Braesail nearly 11 years ago, we’d tried numerous times to hook a mooring buoy in small-but-gorgeous, sandstone-gallery-lined Active Cove on Patos Island and spend the night there, but whenever we rounded the point near lighthouse, we always found one or two boats there already, meaning that there would not be enough to room for Braesail to make a safe overnight stay. On this attempt, we had, as usual, planned to motor to Sucia Island upon finding that Active Cove was occupied, but, to our great joy, this time we found the cove EMPTY! AMAZING! With me at the helm maneuvering the boat, Walt grabbed one of the two mooring buoys with our boat-hook, threaded a bow line through the ring at its top, and secured the line to a bow cleat. We were going to enjoy staying at Patos Island at last, and on a perfectly glorious afternoon at that!
I spent some time taking photos of the incredible sandstone “sculptures” lining the shore of the cove as the light changed, and here is my gallery of the “gallery:”
Before and after supper (the prawns were superb with spiced lentils and rice!), Walt and I put in several hours untangling the 500 feet of relatively thin line (similar in size to kitchen twine) that had become horribly knotted when Walt was retrieving the prawn trap. Once it was FINALLY wound neatly around the reel on which it belongs, we were highly relieved, and Walt had worked out solutions to some of the problems that had led to the creation of the tangled mess.
After looking at weather forecasts (especially wind), ferry timetables and space considerations, availability of Prius starter batteries, etc., we decided to motor to Anacortes on Thursday (a 4.5-hour trip), find a slip for the night, retrieve the car from its storage lot, perhaps purchase a new battery and have it installed, and spend Thursday night in Anacortes. On Friday morning, I would take the Anacortes car ferry to Orcas Island and drive to Deer Harbor, and Walt would “single-hand” Braesail to her new mooring berth (where she will spend the winter and spring) in the Deer Harbor Marina (a motoring journey of about three hours). We would meet on the boat on Friday afternoon, ride out a wind storm on Friday night/Saturday, attend worship at Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Eastsound on Sunday, and decide what we’d like to do for our last days of “vacation” thereafter. With tentative plans formulated, I managed to get a decent sleep as fog crept into the quiet cove.
