NOTE: published Tuesday in the Johnstone Strait with weak cell reception. Pictures to come later today

8 o’clock and all’s well.

Cell reception is really flaky here and I don’t anticipate it getting better. Tonight it’s Octopus Islands, half way up Quadra. Then on to Port Neville up the Johnstone Strait and I figure we might finally have good reception the day after in Port MacNeil.

This morning’s post is dedicated to our dinghy, the uninflatable inflatable. While we have currently managed to fill it to some level of stability, it seems we need to acquire dry suits to use it.

Let’s start with the beam. I figure it’s less than 3′ from pontoon to pontoon. The pontoons sit up atop a deep V hard bottom that is deeply dissatisfied with its lot. My current theory is that the bottom wanted to be a top and when it proved unsuited to its role, it was assigned the deeply unsatisfactory job of holding the two pontoons together. Alas it was too small for the job.

Nevertheless the dinghy gods persisted and attached a much too shallow transom and capped it off with a seat perched way, way up high. All in all a masterful design if one was attempting to win the world record in tippiness. I’ve been in canoes all my life and nothing compares to this monstrosity.

If one is alone in this supposed 3-person craft and rowing, then it is a reasonable facsimile of a boat. Add a second person and you now combine the side-to-side tippiness with fore and aft verticality. Perhaps the rating suggests you must have three people to attain the proper equilibrium but I remain wary of its capacity to act as anything other than a floating bathtub at that point.

Which brings us to its affinity for water. Now I freely admit we’ve been stressing its capabilities by attempting to motor in large choppy water, but this thing seems to take every opportunity to take in water. Sit too far forward, water rolls over the bow; sit too far amidships and it spills over the transom. Don’t even think about sitting too far aft. The self-bailer doesn’t let water out unless you haul it out of water comletely, but it’s happy to let water in the moment you stop moving. We have been soaked every time we’ve used this silly contraption.

On top off all this, the narrow, deep bottom and high pontoons, combined with the tiny swim platform in the Shearwater, have inevitably caused me grief every time I try to put the motor on. There is a fender at the rear of the Shearwater to protect marauding dolphins and the occasional cheeky sailboat from the edges of the swim ladder. This additional six inches, the depth of the dinghy’s bottom and the fact I am no longer young enough to even consider doing the splits have made manhandling the 5-hp outboard an exercise in inevitability. Inevitably either it or I or both are going overboard.

Stupid dinghy.

Oh and the ‘manual’ says to tie off the dingy on the side opposite from the exhaust. You know, the starboard side, where the life ring, BBQ, rescue collar, back stay, winch and the big honking wheel live. That’s been a smooth-flowing operation every time we do it. Not. So here I sit in my mostly dry, salt-stained pants from last night’s soaking, whining and whinging about a piece of equipment that will, I am most confident, continue to haunt us for the next two weeks.

Stupid dinghy. But I’ll grow to love it…

Last night we joined the crew of the Corus, Intrepid 4 and Ocean Grace ashore and chatted around the fire pit for a bit. A beautiful sunset that we left half way through as it occurred to me that the sunset signaled the sun going down. SD (stupid dinghy) and I weren’t ready for nighttime maneuvers quite yet. Back aboard we cleaned up, dried off and had a late-night hot-choccy.

Speaking of drying off, I did some laundry the other day and, as some of you may have seen, hung it off the back stay to dry while we motored down the Malaspina Strait. Unfortunately for me, the Dollar Store clothespins were not up to the job, and after one particular gust of wind the middle pair of underwear flew off into the sea. While I considered an emergency man-shorts overboard drill or even an all-stations Pan Pan call, it was decided to simply salute and sail on.

This is particularly of significance because while I packed a good week of clothes in all other areas, for some reason I counted 5 days as a week in the underwear department. I’m not sure how, but I am sure that this is some how a function of associating with Carmen for so long. Be that as it may, I am now down to 4 pairs. Heh.

So back to today. We started getting antsy around 10:30, so decided to up anchor a bit early. Everything went smoothly and we pulled out just behind Intrepid 4. The winds were 15-20 knots for a bit, but we were motoring. Halfway up Hoskyn Channel, Intrepid swung into the wind to try sailing. I think right around there the winds died to 6 knots or so. Heh.

We arrived at the Settlers Group ,where Beazley Passage was, an hour and a bit before slack. Coasting along at a knot or two, we toured the bay as more and more boats arrived. Eventually Corus showed up with Mariners Compass close behind, about a half hour before slack. They headed right into the passage and eventually everyone followed. Since we weren’t anticipating this, we were out of position and transited last of 8 boats. I have no idea where Simply Irresistible or R Shack Island were (or are).

After transiting behind Arcturus (a newer Bavaria 32) and Intrepid, our superior speed allowed us to overtake them and we eventually entered the Octopus Islands just behind Ocean Grace. We came in on the north side from Bodega Anchorage down this long narrow passage. L was in the bow watching for rocks and bottom and I was dead slow and peering anxiously about. We swung around and spotted Corus amongst the islets and headed to a space a bit away from them.

We dropped the anchor and I rowed ashore with the stern line. Basically I had done a good job of missing any tree or rock that we could tie to. I found one and we were stable, but then Laurence suggested we move to the other side of him. Since I was not all that pleased with my position I agreed and we cast off, up anchored and moved on.

This time Ian and Howard from Corus volunteered to pick up our stern line and I said ‘What the hell.” Ironically it turns out I should have done it myself as Howard ended up doing quite a climb: 5.6 or 5.7 at least. In the end we were stern anchored successfully and it was time to break out the beer.

No sooner had Ian and Howard made or back to their boat and settled in than I discovered I was missing an oar (from stupid dinghy). It must have dropped off somewhere between anchoring attempts. I called over to Corus, and Howard dropped into their tender to come get me so we could search. Just after he got his motor started, the oar floated out from under the boat. I jumped in our dinghy and grabbed it. Meanwhile Howard’s outboard cut out and he was now drifting away. I called for two cold beer stat and rowed off to the rescue. Beer delivered, I took their tender in tow and started rowing for home. Three or four pulls and suddenly the outboard came back to life. Kismet was definitely playing games with us. A tip of the hat and it was back to our respective beers.

The Doc went for a bit of a lie down and I wrote a bit and then decided to row over to Corus for a bit of wtf and how do. Seems tomorrow has been put off until tomorrow: 6am to be precise. Laurence will listen to the early-morning weather and formulate a plan. Upper Rapids are slack at 7:30 am so we will make a go / not go decision in plenty of time.

I also found it they’ve all been chatting on channel 68. Seems the lack of communication was simply a lack of communication. That makes me feel a bit better. So tomorrow is an early day. I rowed around the islets and checked out the crowd. Raven’s Magic is having windlass troubles so they are rafted to Mariners Compass. Ocean Grace went way down Wiatt Bay. R Shack Island is due in after afternoon slack. Back at the Shearwater, Corus, who is also having windlass issues, decided to up anchor and move further down the cove. Right after my visit. Coincidence?

Actually I think their anchor was dragging and they didn’t want to be beam on to the wind.

Not much planned for tonight except to watch the bald eagles fish and the kelp float by. Definitely no service here so you’ll be reading this later. We’ll be drinking in your past. And probably present…

A cleansing shower made me feel human again and it was time to cook. I decided to make tomato salad, so supper ended up as pancakes and Zinfandel, a time-honoured tradition. I blame it on the small galley. The fact that my pancakes tasted more like crepes I blame on the organic jumbo eggs from Granville Market and the total lack of any kind of measuring device on this boat. How hard would it be to toss in one Pyrex measuring cup, for god’s sake?

After cleaning up I did some laundry and hung it out to dry. Then it was time to threaten Leslie with my superior card skills. So she decided to read…

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4h27m 17.6nm