One of the most basic rules you learn when you go cruising on a small boat is never have a schedule. The theory being that once you set a deadline you limit the options and you may make poor decisions just to keep to the schedule. Leaving in poor weather because you must be at place x by a certain time for example. The other reason of course is that you never know what might come up.
That’s our situation right now. We were supposed to be well on our way north yet here we are still dealing with a main sail that won’t roll up right.
I’ll be the first to admit this is not the part of the equation I thought would give us any grief. Of all the things we had done or changed on the boat I thought this one should be a snap. The old sail and furling system worked well. We provided the old sail to the sailmaker to work from and use as a template. I thought it would be a simple case of cut, sew and voila we have a new sail. Ok it was that simple for me. Maybe slightly more complicated for the sailmaker but still, this is just weird.
We were back at the marina in Sidney today and the sailmaker was confident that we had it beat and the changes he made were going to work. Almost. We have all but about a foot and a half that works well but then we get to this section and it, for lack of a simpler description, falls out of its track. Of course, this troublesome section is in the middle of the sail so once it falls out of the track the rest follows.
The sailmaker has one last trick he wants to try so we are back in our holding pattern for another 5 days. We’ll use this time to meet with the high frequency radio guy and get that setup, so we can get weather faxes and send and receive emails. We’ll check out some more spots in the Gulf Islands and we are having a new life raft we ordered sent to our friends in Nanaimo so we can stop there and pick that up.
Ever follow one of those cars that had the licence plate frame that said, “I’d rather be sailing”?
So, would we!
I’m starting to get tired of lemonade
Have you had a chance to pilot your new toy, the drone?
The unfortunate part of our current location is that it is adjacent to the sea plane base and the aviation authority frowns on flying drones in airplane space. As soon as we get out of town I can let it loose.
At the north end of De Coursey is a small bay and then there’s Link Island. There is a small reef joining the two islands. The gap was only usable at high tides. Brother 12 had his disciples carve out a trench in the reef that would allow shallow drafts to get through at low tide. They did this with HAND tools only. If you look at the islands on Google maps you can see the channel they dug out. My buddy owes a big chunk of the old Brother 12 settlement. Several of the original building sites are still present. Lots of good BC history.