6/16

Tho i think i was up by 7, it takes a long time to get disconnected. I had breakfast and bot groceries at the Safeway. Trash. Fill water bottles. Turn in gate key. Stow onboard stuff so it doesnt thrash around too much. And i had to find charts i'd need for the day. There are many charts, all rolled up. I found that some got damp in the Cruise Ship encounter, but none were significantly moldy. Then refueling. Of course i want to get going because morning has the smoothest sea, but i didnt finally get going til 1045.

Somewhere in the course of all this prep... Of course there was a lot of getting in/out of the boat from the dock. Getting in is hard: I step from dock to the top of the hull, then grab a roof rail with 1 hand, and something else with other because the next move is awkward. There is a 2nd step provided inside the cockpit, but it's more of a drop than any normal stair, it's tucked in under the side, and the step itself is very narrow. So this time the sliding glass door was open, so i grabbed around the edge of the open doorway for support during the awkward move. Of course as soon as i stepped onto the boat, it rocked, and the door came crashing shut, wounding my middle finger. Ow!

Refueling: as i've said over&over, i must watch how much i'm putting in carefully, and also how fast it's pumping because there's never any auto-shutoff, so i dont spill. I was a little less than half full so needed ~40gal, meanwhile a big commercial fishing boat was docking, noisy diesel, wake rocking my boat up&down as i on my knees lean out over the gap, nozzle into the filler on side of the hull. I thot i heard the telltale gurgle and sure enuf it was right near 40, good, so the attendant shut it off and wrote the bill, then i realized i was in Canada, that was 40 liters, i should have about 120 to go. So i apologized and we started over, but he said that wasnt so bad, a similar error years ago with a jet airliner caused it to run out of fuel, a long but fascinating story.

Docks of course float, but the sea surface is always rising/falling with the tide. So there's always a sliding ramp to get from sea level to the land. Tides here are commonly 15', lately it seems they'v been even more, someone said 20', maybe global warming? Just kidding, it's the full moon. In any case, the climb up the ramp i find exhausting. Due to my error at Prince Rupert, i had to climb it twice.

An explanation for tides...

A Flat Earth explanation for tides...

So: south. The sea was perfect. Buit the speed was a couple mph less than normal. Flat earth or not, for awhile the tide was against me, but, tho cloudy, there were blue patches to be seen.

And so it went all thru the day, til late afternoon. Despite the narrow channel, suddenly i was running against 3-4' waves, the wind was aligned with the channel, i had to slow to 10mph. This was silly. Fortuitously i spied a Marine Park on the chart and ducked in there. I was really pleased because Marine Parks have mooring buoys: no anchor to deal with, no chance of dragging. Except this 1 was undeveloped, just a cute little cove with all-around 'protection'. The trouble was that if was very deep, hence trouble with anchor again. (100' deep, if you want the ideal 7:1 scope, then you need 700' of line. I have 230' on 1 anchor, 180 on the other.) No matter, it was perfectly calm, i found a spot only 55' deep, and spent a silent nite within just a couple boat lengths of the rock cliff face.