Another misty, foggy morning but a nice cup of coffee and a bread/apple concoction in Donna’s famous copper pan was a great start. I walked up to the entrance to the park and took some pictures while everyone got their day started.

After breakfast we grabbed a towel and our trunks and started down the 2 km board walk to the hot springs. We were the only ones there and were anticipating a long leisurely soak. It is a convention to carve your boat name in the planks of the boardwalk and so many of the planks are beautifully decorated. Some were obviously done on a router before arriving — a bit of a cheat I think — but many were hand-carved in situ.

The forest is beautiful and although it had been cut at some point there are many huge cedars and even bigger stumps. At the end of the trail there is a change room and a natural rocky outfall filled with boiling hot stream of water that magically appears from the hillside.

As Leslie and I stepped out onto the covered deck that overlooks the springs, two grey whales surfaced several times right below us. I scrambled up the rocks to try and follow their path but they had disappeared into the mist. I did get a few quick pics of their backs. I went back to the deck to tell Leslie only to find two strangers. It seems that a tour boat had showed up right after we had left the dock. By the time we pulled out, 3 boats and 2 seaplanes had brought eager tourists to invade our ‘private’ paradise.

Meanwhile we soaked in the hot pools and heated up our bones and generally relaxed. There were maybe a dozen people there besides us and that was pretty much capacity. Pretty busy for a weekday in May so I don’t want to know what it’s like on an August long weekend.

Back at the boat we repaired a fraying foresail where the leech line was showing and then cast off around noon. I motored us out into the fog and then we headed back inside so we could duck around Flores Island. It was beautiful country and the fog soon disappeared so we could enjoy it.

We crossed through Hayden Passage on a rising tide then fought it the rest of the way back. Along the way we passed the HMCS Saskatoon cruising along at a liesurely 11 knots.

As we emerged the wind came up and we killed the motor and sailed on the jib. We were making better speed but on a worse heading. Then we sailed right back into the fog. After a few tacks the wind shifted slightly and we headed in a long tack out towards open water.

At this point I became confused although I didn’t know it. In my head we would head out a mile or so and tack straight up the channel we need to go down. Unfortunately for me, the twist in the wind meant we had already tacked and I was running in a direction I didn’t need to go. So when I called for a tack we actually ended up running downwind then gybing. Visibility was couple of hundred yards and when Tim asked me where I was going I found myself hopelessly twisted around in relation to the wind.

Tim was trying to get me back on the right tack but I knew that was the wrong direction. I lost most of my words and any ability to process what he was saying. Luckily for all the winds had dropped to a couple of knots and we weren’t going to run down wind in that anyway. So we furled up the jib and I started the engine. Which was in gear. That’s when I abandoned the helm and ran to hide my head.

Leslie took over and motored us out of the fog and down the twisty-turny, reef-filled inlets to Tofino. We called ahead for a slip when we got service and looked forward to some real showers.

As a side note I learned to my chagrin that Terry (who lived in Alberta for 33 years) was a big C conservative-minded fellow. The conversation went ok until he suggested that Klein had improved the social welfare system. I let him know I thought that was laughable but that perhaps we shouldn’t talk about it. He disagreed and wanted to see if perhaps I might be willing to hear his opinion on it. Since I wasn’t and really didn’t want to fight about it, we instead fought about whether or not I should allow the conversation to go on in spite of my opinion. And since I wasn’t willing to do that either, the conversation was childishly (on both our parts, I admit) heated for a few moments. As most of you know I can be a bit pig-headed. But it passed. It did not however, put me in the right frame of
mind to accept my later complete screw up with the proper equanimity. So now I am typing and ‘sulking’ the rest of the way in.

Today is Tim’s birthday so Donna is making a Pork Roast. At one point there was some talk of eating out in Tofino, but that passed and dinner is set for 8 tonight.

Eventually Leslie brought us up on the end of echo dock and we tied up for the night. Everyone scattered and tried to relax and take the chill out of their bones while Donna shopped for a few more ingredients. A few showers were had before dinner as the sun slowly faded.

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B Timothy Keith
–a la iphone!