Refuge Cove General Store and Floats.
We managed to squeeze out of Westview at nine this morning and had anice push from the current up to Desolation Sound which cut nearly an hour off the trip. Some boats managed to get a good sail out of the wind, but it wasn't enough to carry us along, so we motored...AGAIN.
Although we've never been to Refuge Cove and have wanted to visit, this was a working stop – propane and laundry. So we dropped our hook in the lagoon and had lunch before taking the dinghy over for a look around and to have one of the tanks refilled. It's a quaint place, acooperatively owned township, with several homes on stilts joined together by boardwalks with a decent general store and dock at its center. From all accounts, in the summer months, it's the most popular resupply port in Desolation Sound. But today, there are only two boats tied up.
Eighteen dollars later (OUCH...we normally only pay half that) we went back tothe boat. They have three washing machines, so I loaded up as much laundry as I thought I could squeeze in and made my way back which is when I ran into Linda Ward – a former dockmate of ours from San Diego who lives near Seattle. It's such a small world on the water! I have no idea how she recognized me (I had left Sally, my give-away, back on the boat), but she did. We chatted a while through my shock– how are you? where are you headed? – before she needed to leave. But the boat she was on stopped by Cambria to shout hello to David and they were able to talk on the VHF radio, so it was a nice surprise for both of us.
While it looks cloudy just about every where else, the weather in Desolation is beautiful today – sunshine and blue skies. But the water is brown. You can literally see clouds of silt floating just under the surface from the winter melts. Tomorrow we'll make our way through the first set of rapids, Hole in the Wall, and go to the Octopus Islands Marine Park for a second visit in an attempt to escape the dirty water as we move north – let's just hope we bring the good weather with us.
0 comments