March 26, 2022
We finally left the dock! it wasn’t without incident.
Turns out I have COVID. I felt fine enough (just cold symptoms), but Mark wasn’t keen on leaving the dock. The only problem was that on April 1st, there is a huge marina shuffle planned and we would be forced to move our slips anyways. We decided to wait out some wind in the morning and see how the day progressed.
By noon we decided it was now or never and untied the lines. Our slip neighbour helped and it was a very smooth undocking (says the person who doesn’t helm the boat).
We had a nice sunny broad reach to Nanaimo. The winds were moderate and things were looking good. Until I threw up all over the place. Maybe it was nerves leading up to the sail or maybe it was the covid, but I was so seasick.
Happy cold clams. One clam has covid.
The day was running low on light so we had to motor the last little bit into the anchorage.
Mark Bay/Newcastle/Saysutshun was pretty empty. The mooring field had a couple boats and the anchorage had the live aboards. We grabbed a mooring and called it a day.
Broad reaching all day
Nice little mooring
A park we’ve come to love
Aside from the seasickness, great day.
NM sailed: 36
March 27, 2022
Foraging for Food and Other Fun
We had a full day to explore before we had to settle in to the week of work. I was still going strong despite the covid, so we went out early to set a crab trap.
Once we had the trap dropped, we headed back to the marina park (Newcastle Island) for some exploring. The dogs were happy to stretch their legs and we enjoyed some good walks along the hiking trails. In the summer, the island is full of campers and people over from the city for the day. But since this was March, it was empty with the exception of the caretaker and a couple brave souls camping or on their boats.
After a couple of hours, we went back to check the crab traps. Mark had little faith the my grubby piece of chicken and crab spray would work but I pulled up a trap full of crabs. It was so exciting. Especially once we set them free in the dinghy so we could measure them. Thankfully Mark stepped up and did all the hard work….no one lost any digits except for that one crab who fought too hard on his way into the pot.
The crabs were tasty enough, but a real pain the butt to cook. I cooked one, and left another for a later day.
Crabs!
The sun was so nice
A real pretty place
Daffodils everywhere
Great time out walking
March 29, 2022
The Day it Went Wrong
Today we ran out of power. 100% out of power. As in the boat shut itself down. A boat with zero power is next level quiet. On top of that, Covid’s hit the boat in full force. Mark is down for the count, I’m basically dead too.
The solar controller, the gadget that tells us our battery percentage, has been reading 90-100% daily, so we didn’t think anything is wrong. Except it wasn’t working and we drained the batteries to the point that the boat turned everything down. Did we bring anything to troubleshoot this with? Nope. That would have been a good idea. Instead, Mark jury-rigged an LED light into a voltmeter. There’s some voltage, but not enough to run the systems.
But wait, there’s more! The toilet also stopped working. Why? Who knows.
So here we are. Two people sick in a boat without any power or a functioning toilet. To add to it, an otter keeps using our dinghy as his dining table. Each morning, I’m picking crab carcasses out of the dinghy.
WTF otters
April 2, 2022
We (I) nervously set sail home after a packed week of COVID, power outages and sunny weather. Thankfully we’re both feeling better. We’ve been running the engine to charge up the batteries enough to get by as well. Mark sorted a snake and we cleared whatever clogged our princess of a plumbing system.
The skies were clear , but the conditions were upwind and a bit sportier than we’d been used to (considering this was the 4th sail or so with the new boat). We set a tack and all was well until I auto-tacked up closer to home. For whatever reason I just froze with the boat flapping in the wind. Days like these make me wonder how we’ll (I’ll) ever venture out past the Straight.
NM sailed: 36
Comments