First Sailing Trip – Day 3 – The Wanderer

Woke up this morning and we managed not to run in to the Mr. Anchor Master’s boat so that was nice. We took the dinghy out to the crab pot to find an empty dog food can and a huge starfish. We let the starfish go and fired up the Farymann. Devon and Colm raised anchor and we motored out of Reid Harbor. There were still a lot of boats. As we headed North-west around Stuart Island towards Canada and the Shipping lanes I was reading the chart, drinking orange juice and eating my ham and cream cheese bagel. We dodged a few HYUNDAI’s as we motored across the border towards South Pender Island and Bedwell Harbor. Customs was relatively painless. We tied up on a flotilla and nearly sunk the dinghy getting ashore. It turns out that 4 people is too many in our Dinghy.

After Bedwell, we headed back out towards the shipping lanes and North-East around South Pender towards Plumper Sound. There was some exceptional sailing out there with good strong winds pushing us at a good 7 knot pace.

We motored the remaining distance into Plumper Sound and tied up on a public wharf at Lyall Harbor. There’s a Pub here that was kinda cool. Also, a large freighter was anchored out in the Sound which seemed strange. We had some drinks at the pub, waited for hours for the Harbormaster to pay for moorage and chatted with the owners of the only other sailboat on the dock.

Their boat is almost as big as ours, nearly as old, designed by some of the same people, and they bought it about the same time we did ours. They’d dropped their last winch handle today so we gave them the older of the two we had. In exchange, they brought over a bottle of Wine that they make at home and then we all had drinks in the Pub together. All in all a fun evening. Afterwards, Colm BarBQ’d steaks which were very good.
One problem, we had tied our dinghy to the dock just aft of the boat earlier and when we came back down to the boat it was gone. It was also very dark. Apparently I am not the most skilled knot tyer in the bunch. The Dinghy was seemingly lost and this was obviously a tragedy. At least we took the motor off. Then I spotted the little boat under the ferry terminal bridge against the shore. Somehow, it had gone north from the dock, then swung back toward shore, and south around the dock till it stopped there. VERY strange. I pulled the little boat back over to the dock and we retied it.
Tomorrow, we’ll be heading deeper in to the Gulf Islands. We gotta figure out this diesel fume problem though.