Poets Cove to Nanaimo

Monday brought a tough wake up for Chef and me. We’d heard that we’d be heading out at 6:30 am so we thought that if we got up at 6:00 or 6:15, we’d have enough time to throw on some clothes and get upstairs in time for the sail past.

I didn’t sleep very deeply during the night. I think I was getting used to the movement of the boat and the new surroundings. At about 5:30 am, I heard the dog running around on the deck above us. That was enough to rouse me. I lay in my berth, clearing the cobwebs and finally decided to get up. Our cabin is pretty tight, so we can’t both be up and getting ready at the same time. I decided to go ahead and get up first. I’d grabbed my clothes and had just pulled off my pajama bottoms to change, when someone started pounding at the hatch, then threw it open. I was standing in half the buff, trying to cover myself. The lady of the boat had come down to warn us that we should wake up before the engines got started, as they would be pretty loud. She closed the door, and I sheepishly slipped on my pants and headed upstairs, followed a few minutes later by Chef.

It was such a beautiful morning it was worth the early wake up. The light was just perfect, warm morning light. All the boats were flying 40 ft streamers and they looked festive. The boats lined up in formation, largest to smallest, and we set out for the sail past.

The sail past was surreal. It felt like some Hollywood movie shoot with all the media there taking photos. The photographers were shooting from a seaplane, a helicopter, fast boats, from the land, and even from other boats. It was our moment in the sun, we felt like a bunch of supermodels with all the lenses pointing in our direction. I think the boaters were enjoying watching the media, as much as the media was enjoying the photo shoot.



After the sail past, we began our journey to our next destination, Nanaimo. The journey there was beautiful. We all passed through Dodd Narrows without a hitch. In fact, the water was like glass. The sun was out and it must have been 80 degrees. It took us about two hours to get to Nanaimo, which is a pretty good size city, and also the last major stop for supplies for the next week or more.

First organizational challenge of the day: We had a series of seminars set up for participants. They were meant to start at three and run until six. At 2:30, I got a call from my 3:00 – 4:00 speaker (he is also a participant). It turned out that his dinghy had a substantial problem and he was taking it to the mechanic to get it fixed – right then. I think he’d forgotten that he was meant to teach a class in an hour (ironically, the class he was teaching was on dinghy repair). I called around frantically trying to first find, and then reschedule my other speakers. I managed to get that done, then I had 15 minutes to get to the yacht club where our seminars were being held. I’d expected to go with the gentleman who was now repairing his broken dinghy to our location. It was two miles away, so I couldn’t walk, I ran up and caught a taxi, and got there just after 3:00. When I arrived, my rescheduled speaker was sitting outside alone. I joined him. It turns out; no one was there yet. We decided to wait for a half hour and see if anyone showed up. No one did. It seems that people were really concerned with getting supplies purchased and loaded onto their boats. It actually worked out all right for the speaker and me (he also works for the company) as we had plenty of work to do.

Second Organizational Challenge of the Day: a few hours after we left Poets Cove, I realized that I’d left some materials behind. I’d staged some mugs at the dock for our dockside breakfast (which got cancelled). I’d also left a carton of 50 boxes of chocolates in the walk in fridge at the restaurant. I called the hotel (I can’t believe how well cell phones have been working for us on this trip). They looked into sending a fast boat out with the goods to catch up with us – but that option was $800 – more than the cost of the items being transported. The other option was to send them by courier to another location that we’d be stopping at in about a week. Even thought we are sending the materials via courier, I’ve been warned that they may not arrive in time. I’m really hoping they do, because it will be ridiculous if I then have to send courier them again to another location. I’m also worried because it has been so warm here (in the 80s) that when they do arrive, they may just be boxes of chocolate blobs. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

At 6:00, all the people loaded up onto their dinghies or the water taxi and we headed over to a floating restaurant called the Dinghy Dock Pub. It is a cute place, where almost every item on the menu is fried. The highlight of the night was having the folks from the sail past rejoin us. They passed out awards to those individuals that really stood out during their salute. The best-dressed participants received a bottle of salad dressing. The offender award went to a family that apparently showed a good deal of their back end during their salute, they received an old fender.

After dinner, we floated on back to the harbor and to our boats. We finished up some details from the night and prepped for the next night. Then, the staff joined together when our leader (who has recently been given the stage name Buck Naked by Chef who likes to project people’s privacy in her blog) asked us for some help coming up with copy for the first page of the Grand Banks blog. The conversation started out very seriously as we shared ideas for tone and content, but within about a half hour, it completely devolved into hours of one liners, jokes and put downs. We were all running on fumes, and were punch drunk. It was the kind of laughing that makes you cry and makes your stomach hurt. Somehow, Buck got his copy written and posted that night, and it sounded very good.