That’s what today was supposed to be, at least. And certainly, I’m going to hit the bunk right after writing this, because tomorrow’s busy schedule calls for an early departure and promises a day of, shall we say, interesting, sailing and navigating from start to finish.
To start, we will have to pick our way in the pre-dawn murk through the moored field of derelicts to get out of Silva Bay, where we are spending the evening at Pages Marina and Resort. We’ll thread the needle passing Tugboat Rock, which seemed narrow enough even in the light of day as we came in this afternoon. Then, there is the Strait of Georgia, a vast and tempestuous body of water that has been blown back and forth by gales to a fever pitch this week. The forecast looks promising for good sailing weather in the morning, and by “good” I mean a small craft advisory and rain. That is genuine improvement, and will help make our crossing to Vancouver a speedy one.
There, we will have to brave the gauntlet of Royal Canadian Navy vessels guarding the city during the Games. I could hear them, 20 miles distant today as I rocketed up Trincomali Channel in a following wind, hailing and stopping every small craft in their vicinity. What terrors will Navy Warship 710 hold for us tomorrow? Hard to say.
After that, we have the relatively pedestrian difficulty of tying up at the False Creek Harbour Authority docks in high winds. May the gods shine favorably upon our electrical needs and also assign unto us a windward slip! I’ll worry about getting out of it later!
Then, there is the madcap dash through Vancouver, picking up tickets, locating buses, transferring to other buses, finally, hopefully, ending up on our assigned transport to Whistler, which will bear us on a three hour trip during which we can take our first breath of the day (and, hopefully, eat something).
We’ve been lucky so far, luckier than I deserve, getting to this point from Seattle in three days time. Mandy got done early Tuesday, we got out of Shilshole sooner than I hoped, and the corresponding ebb current took us north to Everett in good time. I managed to avoid the two massive dredges camped in the channel right outside the marina and we managed to get some sleep, despite their all-night operations. Worse than the dredges were their attendant tugs, flitting in and out to dump loads of sludge out in the harbor. They took pity on first-time visitor me, though, and didn’t blast us with wake nor prop wash as they tended their massive charges.
When I woke in the morning the deck was white with frost, and the dredges were still going at it, though now at a respectful distance. It was dark and I pulled out with Mandy still sleeping below. The auto-pilot was still sleeping as well, unfortunately, so I hand-steered until the sun came up, and when Mandy came up to stand her first watch, the auto-pilot magically recovered.
We hit Deception Pass right on time, slid through without even a lurch, and found good sailing wind in Rosario Strait, which bore us up as far as Blind Bay without pause. The next morning, we skipped across to Sidney in light winds and cleared customs without a snag. We moored in Montague Harbour promising ourselves that since we were on time, and since Saturday would be so long, today, Friday, would be a short day, a quick skip up to Silva Bay, then a day of rest.
Which it more or less was, except that rounding Gray’s Peninsula coming out, I put us up on a rock.
If I were the sort of person to easily let such things go, it might not have been so bad; we were on rising tide, our engine was running, and a nearby BC Hydro crew boat (the same, in fact, that I had been angling uncomfortably in-shore to let past us… still, I swear that shoal comes out further south than it shows on either of our charts!) took a halyard and tipped us to allow us to reverse off. All told, probably took no more than five minutes. I’m sure the leading edge of the keel looks a mess, but otherwise, no damage found to hull, keelbolts, or running gear.
Nonetheless, it put a pall over the day and leaves me feeling rather incompetent to do something like crossing the Strait of Georgia tomorrow. Sailing seems to be that way, for me; as soon as I start feeling comfortable doing it, something happens to take that away. It goes right back to childhood. Learning on my cousins’ Hobie cats, no sooner did I feel comfortable flying a hull without adult supervision, my cousin Craig and I flipped on the Columbia and drifted downstream in the chilly waters a mile or two before anyone noticed, unable to right it due to water in one of the hulls.
I’ve been told that people go aground sailing, but it’s always seemed a bad practice to me, and I am one of those guys you see rounding buoys meant to guide much larger vessels even when the chart shows plenty of clearance inside. It unnerves me that I can take such precautions and yet still get caught out. It’s extraordinarily humbling, and for me, at least, causes questions about whether or not I am capable of living this sort of lifestyle. After all, most folks just ground their boats, not their homes.
Still, I will shake it off and go out tomorrow, just as I kept going this afternoon. There are worse things that can happen, even on a day of rest, as we found when we docked here at Pages and the wharfinger told us of the tragedy that had happened today at the Olympic Luge track, the event we are supposed to see tomorrow. We may or may not see it. I may or may not be much of a sailor. But none of it seems to matter very much compared to what happened to that young man representing his country today.
Rest in peace, Nodar Kumaritashvili.