Last night was a special dinner of pork loin followed by birthday cake. The cake was smarty-covered brownies and was decadently delicious.

I was up at 6:30 and heading for the shower. The tide was dropping and we had to be gone by 8 or we would be sitting on bottom. It was a lovely hot 3-loonie shower. Back on board we fired up the engine and cast off heading for the fuel dock.

What followed was about 5 hours of motoring in the fog with less than a 1/4 mile visibility and 8-10 foot swells. It wasn’t unpleasant but it wasn’t all that interesting either. About a 5 on the Anxious Scale. As we passed Long Beach we moved closer to shore but all we could see was the occasional breaker.

Eventually we turned in to negotiate the rock pile that is the entrance to Ucuelet. It was the epitome of nerve-racking for poor Bob. The lighthouse foghorn was droning on a 20 second cycle and the red lateral buoy was honking away and a faster rate as the swells lifted then dropped it. Waves were crashing on rocks all around us and visibility had only improved marginally. But as we rounded the point, the fog miraculously lifted and everyone smiled up at the sunshine.

We cruised the waterfront of Ucuelet for a while. After a few tight spins in and amongst the boats docked in the public marina for practice, we headed back out into the fog and Barclay Sound.

We cruised the Broken Group of islands for a couple of hours as we indirectly made our way (in the finally-appearing sunshine) to Pipestem Inlet to drop anchor behind a few islets adjacent to Bazett Island. It’s high tide, but supposedly there are oyster beds all around us that will appear as the tide drops.

While the weather has been ‘fine’ a certain amount of sail despair has begun to hang over the crew. The forecast has called for 15-20 knots the last couple of days and it has again and again failed to materialize. No talk of mutiny so far but there have been evil-sounding grumblings.

Tim, Terry and Bob headed out to go exploring in the dinghy while the rest of us basked in the sun on the deck. Later I rowed around a bit myself. Tim tried a few casts and hooked a little gaffer but threw him back. I even tried a few casts myself with enough success to prove muscle memory is a real thing. I think I was 12 or 13 the last time I cast an open-face reel.

After that everyone pretty much crashed to enjoy a quiet evening. Only Tim had the energy to row off with his fancy new trolling reel and see what there was to catch. Donna’s not changing the menu though.

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