July 3, 2020. Julian Cove to North Harbour, via the Koskino Islands. 20 NM
I was up with the sun in Julian Cove today. It seems like I am getting into the rhythm of daylight hours. I was asleep early last night, and out of bed shortly after 0500. It was the first sunny morning I can remember in a long time. Nevertheless, the thermometer in the cockpit read 9 degrees! It was slightly warmer in the cabin at 13, but still, this is July!
I didn’t feel much like eating, so after a cup of tea, I started to get the boat ready to move. I decided to pull up the mainsail in the anchorage, so I could pay attention to it without having to worry about the boat moving. It went up easily, and I elected to put the first reef in, partly to practice, and partly because I wasn’t sure what to expect out in the sound. Once the sail was up, I stepped back to admire the new canvas, and looked up to the top to make sure it was fully raised. As I did this, the second overboard situation of the trip occurred. I heard a clack-clack of something bouncing off the deck, and then a small sploosh. I looked overboard to see my prescription sunglasses slowly sinking into 35 feet of dark, freezing water. I briefly thought of jumping in after them, but I was pretty sure by the time I hit the water, they would be out of reach, and I would be freezing.
The sail that caused the trouble!
I decided to suck it up, and head out. Unfortunately, I didn’t have another pair of sunglasses on board, and wouldn’t you know it, today was one of the first blue sky mornings I’ve sailed in all month. I turned up Quatsino sound, and the wind fluked around, occasionally falling far enough off my nose the mainsail to help out. As I changed course around islands, the wind was all over the place, and up and down, so I didn’t bother trying to pull out the jib as well. I motorsailed along, making good time.
With my early departure, I debated heading all the way back to North Harbour, versus my original plan of stopping in the Koskino Islands. I decided to head for the Koskino’s, as I thought I would still have a telus signal there, and I knew that if I went to North Harbour, that would be the end of my connectivity for possibly the next couple of weeks. It only took me a couple of hours to drop the anchor in the Koskino’s. As I let out the chain, I saw a bear turning over rocks on the shore, looking for a low tide meal. Once the anchor was down, I called Sara to test out the cell signal. It wasn’t very good, and the call dropped. There wasn’t enough signal to get any data either. Given that one more day of talking to my family was the main goal of staying in this anchor, and I still had a lot of daylight to burn, I decided to head on to North Harbour, and take advantage of the store in Winter Harbour to get a pair of sunglasses, as this would be my last chance for a couple of weeks.
Up the anchor went again, and I motored for another hour into North Harbour, dropping the anchor again just before noon. I had a quick lunch of a toasted bagel with peanut butter and jam, then went about getting the dinghy off the deck, and the engine on it. This is all a fair bit trickier with one person, but I managed OK. I gathered up a portable VHF, life jacket, oars, backpack and wallet, and headed off in the strengthening afternoon wind.
It was a wet ride over. It took me awhile to figure out how to balance the dinghy with just one person, and I had forgotten to put the seat in the middle, so the side I was sitting on was weighed down. With the choppy waves, I had a pretty wet back in no time. As I planed along, the engine cut out a couple of times, giving me a bit of angst. It would be a long row back to the boat, especially without the seat in place. That is definitely something I won’t forget again. With a bit of trouble shooting, I managed to get better gas flow to the engine, and got it running again. I pulled up to the Winter Harbour dock about 20 minutes after I left the boat.
The store was open, so I popped in and grabbed two pairs of plastic sunglasses. I’ll miss having my prescriptions in them, but at least they will protect me if I get more sun. And now I have a spare. Since I was on shore, I figured I’d better stretch my legs a bit, so I walked the boardwalk Sara and I had walked about a week ago. It was strange to be doing it alone, now, but there are a lot more people in Winter Harbour than there were last week. It seems like their summer season has started.
Without a word of exaggeration, as soon as I walked out of the store with my new sunglasses on, the afternoon clouded over, and dark clouds threatened rain all around. And it wasn’t just because I had dark glasses on – the sun really did disappear at the exact time that I replaced my glasses.
Clouds coming in. It looked worse in real life. Or was it my glasses?
Since I didn’t want to be dinghying back to the boat in a downpour, I hopped back in, and started to work my way upwind back to North Harbour. It was a bumpy, wet ride. At first, I did better in terms of keeping my back dry, by hunching down in the bottom of the dinghy and staying off the pontoon. But then, I started to get into some big waves from the south, and a couple broke right over the front of the dinghy and into my face. Fortunately, the engine ran without complaint all the way back, and I was relieved to get off onto the boat.
The wind had piped up, and the usual afternoon gusts made it hard to get the dinghy back on the deck, but I eventually did. Normally, we would just leave it down and I would tow it, but I’m planning to head out of the sound into open ocean either tomorrow or the following day, so I’d rather have the dinghy on the deck.
After getting everything put away again, I did some housekeeping chores, taking advantage of the empty anchorage to get the boat cleaned up a bit. The fishing boats seem to like to come back from open water right through this anchorage, and they don’t seem familiar with having a sailboat in here. Once just came within 40 feet of me, full speed, and now I’m rocking in his wake. Oh well, that’s the price of being back near civilization.
Smokey Robinson is singing “Tears of a Clown” right now. Doesn’t really suit my mood at this point, but I can’t think of any songs that have the word “exhausted” in them.
Happy Birthday Sara!
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