I awoke at 6:58 after hearing the noises of the entire fleet raising anchor. I popped up, checked the time and glanced around to see all the boats floating gently in the soft rain. I guess I’m getting paranoid. So I flipped on the VHF and crawled back into bed. 2 minutes later, yesterday’s alarm went off–I guess I forgot to turn it off. Up again, I decided to give up. I turned on the heat and started the water.

The day has officially begun.

Some coffee and a bit of relaxing. A lukewarm shower and some more coffee out in the light drizzle and mist.

I must say that the canal boats had better insulators on the hot-water tanks. We could easily have hot showers the next morning in France, but the Shearwater has consistently given us lukewarm to cool if we don’t have a shower at the end of the motoring day. But we survive these depredations with poise and confidence as we are Canadians and thus sufficient unto the cold.

We’ve got a little over 4 nm to go today. Should be an hour or so. If it wasn’t raining I would be tempted to go whale looking. It’s not yet 9 and Intrepid have pulled up stakes (anchors actually–but that’s not as poetic). I’m getting antsy so my money’s on us being next.

I was right. We up anchored and headed out into the bay, with a brief pause to chat with Dave on R Shack and Larry on Ocean Grace. I left the rpm way down and we headed out at the leisurely pace of 1.5 knots.

Soon the rain stopped and at such a slow speed we were warm and comfy and admiring the scenery float by. The current picked up at narrows by Watson Point so I revved her up for about 5 minutes to get us through. Turning into Turnbull Cove we toured yesterday’s original destination and admired the landslides.

On the way out of the cove we passed by Ocean Grace, and Sheila asked if we’d seen the pod of dolphins. “No,” I replied quite brusquely. “We followed them all the way,” she returned. “No,” I repeated myself, “No dolphins.” I felt a little cheated.

“Huh,” she concluded.

Huh indeed. No pod for us. But we saw seals… Sigh.

Coming out of the cove I noticed the steering was acting up again. I did a little dance with the boat and eventually threw it full power into reverse, only to dislodge a huge frond of cedar. I have no idea how I ran that over without noticing. But there you are.

We meandered by the entrance to Kenneth Passage but declined to enter as we would have to fight the current on the way out. Curving back the way we came we fell in behind Ocean Grace and retraced our steps towards Sullivan Bay. Down Grappler Sound and through Dunsanu Passage we slowly motored and kept an eye out for the “supposed” dolphin pod. Huh indeed.

As we exited on to Sutil Channel, the wind came up and it started to get chilly. Rather than add layers I sped up and less than half an hour later we entered the floating community of Sullivan Bay. As far as I can tell, the fuel tanks are the only thing actually on land here.

There are close to a dozen private floating homes; one even has a helicopter on its roof. A restaurant, a general store, the fuel dock, a party tent and even a driving range round out the amenities, all afloat. At the driving range, if you hit the floating ‘hole’ you win your moorage for the night.

We came in behind Ocean Grace and tied up. I brought her in sharply between Ocean Grace and a big invisible boat astern and garnered some weird looks. But hey, you gotta practice while the practicing is easy.

[flexiblemap src=”http://macblaze.ca/kmz/Day15.kml”]
3h47m 12.4nm

Showers here run $7 and the laundry is $11/load for a wash and dry. A bit outrageous until you consider where we are. They have wifi but it’s currently flaky. Hopefully it will settle down and I can post this.

We made reservations for dinner: fresh halibut in orange butter sauce (fresh halibut not in orange butter sauce for L) and toured the docks, stopping to gossip and chat as we went. Sandy and her husband John (Simply Irresistible) are from New York and come west every second year. Richard (Mariners Compass) hit a log yesterday and are having their boat dived to check for damage. Dave and Margaret heard rumours of fresh-baked cinnamon buns every morning, but only with reservations, and Syd burned out an impeller on his generator but got it fixed with a part from Dave.

At 3:30 Corus is the only one not in as they decided to go sailing. Likely they had to head back out to the Queen Charlotte Strait to find wind.

We had a skippers meeting at 4:45, about 20 minutes after Corus showed. Apparently they went all the way back to the Strait, but no wind. Tomorrow is Waddington for most, although some will peel off and head to Echo Bay (the next night’s destination).

After the meeting Leslie headed to a good read with her eyes closed and I went golfing. Every night our hosts offer up two balls per boat and you get your selection of clubs to try to hit a target float about 3 feet wide and 150 yards away. Since there were a lot of non-golfers, the results varied from dismal to downright hilarious. Everyone enjoyed themselves.

My first shot with an eight iron was perfectly aligned but fell about 10 or 15 feet short. I tried again with a 5 iron (on Howard’s advice) and got the distance but was probably 15-20 feet too far to the right. Not the best shots but respectable. Anyone making their shot got a free night’s moorage. No one got a free night.

As we all trudged off laughing and crying, the young man running the show invited us to take one more swing. Closest to the hole gets a free fresh-baked turnover tomorrow. This time I looked like a shoe-in as Howard deferred to Andrea who had never golfed (like several other crew). Since Leslie was, ahem, ‘reading’, I wasn’t forced to share. My shot plunked in the water 15 feet or so short of the target setting the bar. Then came Dave. An obvious golf sharp, Dave had underplayed his skills in the first round realizing he couldn’t make the target anyway. Those shots sliced off or fell way short. But now, oh but now, the blood-red turnover cherry juice was in the water and out came the skills. With one masterful stroke he deposited the ball within 5 or 6 feet of the target and relegated the rest of us to the turnover-less dustbin of loserville.

But I was munificent in defeat and held my head high as I slunk away from the pier of battle.

Back at the boat I collected the sleeping reader and we grabbed cheezies and a beer/cider and headed over for happy hour. The fellow who a few hours ago had been diving Mariners Compass to check for damage was now sitting behind his electric piano and doing the lounge-singer thing. Pretty good, too. A bit of socializing and then he had a Name That Tune contest. He described it as a theme song from a 70s tv show that was on every night of the week. I guessed the answer before the first note.

Sure enough I yelled out Theme from M*A*S*H after the first note and won, for my pains, a free car and the opportunity to stand up in front of everyone like an idiot. Me and my big mouth.

Next he made everyone introduce ourselves so I was blessed with yet another chance to speak in public. Joy. A bit later it was 6:05 so we trucked off to the restaurant to eat. Fresh buns and a bottle of Beringer Merlot to start. While we were waiting for our main, Debbie, the female half of the management team, came over to chat. She’d heard I was from Edmonton and wanted to reminisce. Seems she was Debbie Holt from Radway and was pretty sure she knew of the Hrynchuks from Redwater. Small, small world.

Dinner and desert was delish and I was thoroughly sated by the time we rolled out of there. I was even too full for more booze, if you can believe it.

After dinner I grabbed a $7 shower and chatted a bit more on the docks. Anne and Laurence will be popping over tomorrow before dinner for appies; I’m looking forward to picking their brains about their publishing experiences.

One other thing of note is that Richard from Mariners Compass lent us his Macbook over dinner and the backup eReader is once again charged. Quirky thing; there is no reason it should only charge from a computer, but apparently that is the way it is. At least Leslie can leave Shogun behind for a while.

Happy Solstice.