There are good days and bad days on the water. Whenever you sail to a schedule, you greatly increase the chances that you'll see a bad one. And today was one of those days.
It started off inauspiciously when we were raising the anchor which kept tripping out the winch making me wonder if we were fouled on an old piece of logging equipment left in the water to rust away. We'd pull in a few metres and it would stop from the added strain. David would go below decks, flip the breaker, and we'd try again only to have it stop after a few more metres. But eventually the anchor came up clean – most likely just getting hung up in the crevices of rocks – and we carried on.
Things looked more promising as we exited the anchorage to a calm day on the water -- hardly a breath of air. The tide wasn't in our favour, but we still saw a slight push from a back eddy and the trip down to Westview, where we stopped to re-provision, was short. Arriving by 10 o'clock, David had his list and I had mine. I made my way up “Cardiac Hill” to buy groceries while he brought the leaking core from the heater fan to a radiator shop to see if it could be re-sautered to save us buying a new one and pick up some things from the local chandler. We both finished by one o'clock (with a repaired core in hand) and were on our way again - things were really falling into place – but, by this time, the wind had started to pick up from the southwest …as forecasted.
By two o'clock, it was a sloppy ride with one metre, moderate seas. The wind was only blowing 13 knots (right on our nose) but Malaspina Strait looked like a washing machine with waves stacked up one after the other. As we climbed up one wave, we'd crash down into the trough of the next one making the boat feel more like a hobby-horse than a sailing vessel. Neither one of us are prone to sea-sickness, but if we were, today would have been the day. It was enough to rattle your teeth and tempt us into stopping off at Ballet Bay for the night. But with only eight more nautical miles to go, we carried on. I can honestly say the entrance to Pender Harbour, and the flattening of the sea, was a very welcomed sight.
The anchorage was crowded with boats here to enjoy the festival but, tired from a long day, tonight we're not one of them. The music will just have to wait until tomorrow.
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