the Discovery Islands
the Inside Passage
Shoal Bay, East Thurlow Island
Monday, August 08, 2011TheCambrians
Cambria and About Time at anchor in Shoal Bay.
Yesterday began innocuously enough with boats coming and going out of Shoal Bay (our friends, Bill and Sylvia, among them). And ended with one of the neighbours being evacuated by helicopter to Campbell River.
To start, Bill and Sylvia arrived in the early afternoon and I took them on a tour of the place before sitting down on the deck at the pub for a drink. The neighbours, Chris and Greg, came over with a couple of friends who were visiting, so we all chatted for a while in the late-afternoon sun while they sipped glasses of wine. The next thing we knew, Greg fell to the ground, unconscious – he had had a seizure.
The deck quickly got crowded with people trying to help as Mark ran up to the house to call 911 so, hoping the rest of the lookie-loos would take our lead and get out of the way before the paramedics arrived, we decided it was best to leave. Greg was feeling somewhat better by then and was showing signs of a sense of humour, so we felt confident that he would be okay.
This morning, we said good-bye to Bill and Sylvia as they upped anchor and made way for Blind Channel and then took Sally to shore to check on Greg's condition. By all accounts, he's doing well. Apparently he had a seizure twenty years ago which was brought on by a bought of heavy whiskey drinking. Since then, he's monitored how much he drinks and has always been careful to stay hydrated. But this weekend was a busy one. Between fishing all day with his house guests, the music festival, and plenty of alcohol it proved to be too much and his body cried “uncle”. The doctor is a little concerned about his blood pressure and cholesterol level, but he was released today and he and Chris went back to Vancouver, where they live.
And then we said hello, to Bill and Sylvia that is. David saw Salubrious coming back around the corner, so he took the dinghy out to their boat to see if there was a problem. There was. On their way to Blind Channel, the gauges on the boat stopped working –depth meter, knot log, etc. David came to pick us up and we went home to have lunch, after which he packed up his tools and went over to help Bill while Sally and I went to shore to hang out with Sylvia who was using the internet. It took a few hours, but he found the problem – a bad sender – and was able to fix it by taking it out of the circuit. They'll need to replace it eventually. But this will work for now.
In the meantime our friends, Rick and Gerri Lee (who had come for the music festival and went to Loughborough Inlet for the night), returned. The plan of the day: a trip up Phillips Arm to look for grizzly bears. A couple of other boats thought we had a good idea, so they asked to join the flotilla but, with David working aboard Salubrious, we weren't in a position to go. But the great thing about not sailing to a schedule is that there's always tomorrow
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