macblaze.ca

De omnibus dubitandum
“doubt everything”

Apparently  “Confessions” were semi-jocular questionaires that were popular in Victorian England and filling them out a common pastime in many families. Marx apparently filled them out several times at the behest of his daughters. In both extant questionnaires his answer to Favourite Motto was De omnibus dubitandum (Doubt everything). I came across a post card, that I now use for one of my computer desktops, when touring Marx’s childhood home in Trier. I immediately felt an affinity to the sentiment.

So if you don’t mind having a notorious socialist as your muse, I suggest everyone embrace this as their new motto in this age of misinformation and outright lies.

Where we were

Happy Father’s Day!

I know I have blogged the whole trip with overly-lengthy and oft boring trip reports but I thought I would add a wrap-up for those who just couldn’t stomach all those words. And a map of course…

Some Stats

• 35 days total
• 27 nights at anchor
• 8 nights at marinas (2 at our home port)
• 5 new anchorages
• 4 lunch stops
• 2 raft-ups
• 1 day of rain
• 0 nights on a mooring ball
• 20 days travelling
• 77.5 hours at sea
• 421.5 nautical miles travelled (780.6 kilometres)

Interesting Wildlife

• 2 pods of orca
• 3 tube-snout fish
• lots of sealions (even one sleeping at sea)
• 1 immature bald eagle
• a dozen or so oystercatchers
• 2 deer
• 1 market squid
• and a clam digging back into the sand

Most Interesting Sight

• 1 display of extraordinary local knowledge

“Local knowledge” is the term used when a boater navigates a dangerous area using prior experience (and not through ignorance). The image above was taken in the Copeland Islands. The pass which this Bayliner just transited is completely dry at low water and this image was shot about mid tide. We were holding our breathes as we saw him come through anticipating some sort of horrible scraping as he bounced off the rocky bottom. But fortunately he motored casually through, barely slowing down. Extraordinary.

In Summary

We’ve almost kicked the marina habit. Without the flotilla and good management, I bet we could have gotten our total number of nights at a marina down to 5 or 6. And that really makes my wanting to shell out $1000 for a portable generator a non-starter. Oh well.

And once again we reaffirmed our decision to sail in the early season—awesome weather, minimal mosquitos and rarely too hot & sweaty. And, except when we sought out the company (the CYC flotilla), minimal crowding at some of the prettiest anchorages around.

Not tons of wildlife this trip but some interesting new anchorages (Ballet Bay, Tenedos Bay, midway down Von Donop and Pendrell Sound). And I learned a lot about sail trim from watching the other boats on the flotilla. So all in all a great trip. Hopefully enough of one to last me until next year…

As always a jpeg of the map in case Google ever gets mad enough at me to block my access:

—Bruce #Cruising