Radio Silence

Well, the trip is well underway, and you haven’t heard a peep out of me. My only excuse is that I’ve been insanely busy since the tour started.

Saturday
Saturday was a great day. Aaron and I were up before the crack of dawn, packed up the car and headed to Roche Harbor. The weather was amazing, a bright, warm sunny day. There were over 100 Grand Banks boats in the marina. It was great to walk around the area with Aaron and introduce him to people that will be on the trip. He got a tour of Sanctuary, and got to visit crew quarters (or as Becky and I have come to call it “the hole”).

An aside about “the hole”: You can enter “the hole” one of two ways. The first route takes you through the engine room between the huge twin engines. But when those two 1000 HP engines are running, you don’t want to be anywhere near that room. It is a bit like standing directly under a plane as it takes off. The second entrance is through a hatch (a door) located on the main deck of the boat. You open the door, and descend a ladder straight down into our little lair. There are two windows in our room, each about 7” circumference. One looks out over a beautiful vista that we call the engine room, the other is up the ladder shoot, in the hatch. So, if you stand at the bottom of the ladder and look up, you can see light. When the lights are off in the cabin, “the hole” is as black as night (and our companions wonder why we don’t rouse until the engines get started each morning).

After the tour of the boat, we met up with our friends and had a good cruise around the harbor in their dinghy then had lunch on the sunny deck overlooking the water. Later that night, we dragged Chef along to a great dinner at Duck Soup Inn. Chef and Aaron were cracking me up. They were smelling every little herb and sprout and holding deep discussions with the server about each item. It was fun to see them truly enjoy every aspect of their meal. Then it was back to our rooms to bed.

Sunday
I woke up on Sunday with a lump in my throat. It finally hit me that I was leaving Aaron for three weeks. This was the day that I’d get on the boat and leave Aaron alone to take care of the dogs and himself for the next 19 days. Of course, I was also giddy because it would be the start of my long awaited adventure, but it meant leaving Aaron behind, which was the tough part.

Chef, Aaron and I headed down to Sanctuary and stowed (see how I’m learning the boat lingo???) the last of our bags. Then we headed back up to the head of the dock to grab breakfast. All through breakfast, I was so excited and nervous, and just a little sad. I guess I was just really having a case of reality knowing that departure and the start of the trip was less than an hour away.

Aaron walked with us down to the boat, and we hung out chatting and taking photos. When we found out that we were taking Sanctuary over to the dock to fill up gas, Aaron was able to come aboard and cruise with us over to the fuel dock. At least he got to experience ten minutes of travel aboard Sanctuary. BTW: It took a good 20 minutes (and $250) to top off the boat. And then the moment arrived. Aaron gave me a great hug and kiss (we got busted for macking in public) and he jumped onto the dock.

As soon as we pulled away from the dock, tears started streaming down my face. I was so surprised. I knew I would miss him, but we’ve been apart often before, and the entire “parting is such sweet sorrow fanfare” is generally composed of a drop off at the airport, a quick hug and a kiss and that’s it. No tears, no weeping, no drama. I knew that I would miss Aaron on the trip, but I thought it would take a week or so for the adventure high to wear off and the longing to set in. So, I was rather embarrassed as I clung to the rail of the boat, waving frantically with one hand, and wiping away tears with the other.

I think that Chef was also a little surprised by my, what shall we call it, extravagant emotional display, and she did a great job of cheering me up. She got me to laugh until I could finally get the tears under control.

It only took us about two hours to cross over to Poets Cove Resort on Pender Island, BC. Once we arrived, that’s when my real work started. I unloaded half a dozen boxes and got the gear all set up to greet our guests. Just after noon, people began to arrive. We had a series of seminars set up for the day to help people get their barings and get to know each other. After the seminars, we had a wine tasting and cocktail party, followed by the kick off dinner. The event happened to fall on Mothers Day, so we made a big splash when we had a bouquet of flowers delivered to each of the moms in the room.

The most exciting “change of plans” happened at about 5:00 pm that night. We (the Grand Tour planning folks) had organized a sail past to happen the next day at 8:00 am. For those of you (us) new to boating, my simplistic description of a sail past is as follows: a hosting group of boaters (for example a yacht club) lines up their boats side-by-side in the water. The guest group “sails past” the hosting group one boat after another, and as they sail past the president’s boat, the guest group salutes. It can be a very formal event, with the skipper and crew of each boat decked out in full uniform, complete with starched white pants, pressed blazers, ties, hats, gloves – the whole works.

Well, I’d made all my arrangements around that 8:00 am start time, but the group decided that in order to make it safely through Dodd Narrows, a potentially challenging area, we’d need to change our departure time – to 6:30 am! I spent the next hour or so running around like a headless chicken trying to reorganize. I’d planned a dockside breakfast the next morning, to start at 7:00 am. In order to move the meal up an hour, the restaurant called the chef and other staff to try to get them in earlier. We could get them to come in a half hour earlier, but we couldn’t get them to come in a whole hour earlier. So I had to cancel the breakfast.

A much more significant challenge was reorganizing all of the media. My boss had arranged for a large number of journalists to attend the event. The journalists, in turn, had arranged for helicopters and seaplanes to fly them around for the photo shoot. We ran around to each of the journalists and explained the change of plans. They all got on the phone with the pilots and those plans were all adjusted without a hitch, but not before we shared a mild panic attack.

Then, the news had to be explained to the Canadian boating club that had come to be the sail past committee. They were great sports, and agreed that they would be up by 6:00 am in order to get in formation for the sail past.

With all of our scheduling challenges addressed, we were able to enjoy a really fun night with the participants. Everyone is so excited about this trip. It is starting to feel like a great big floating party.

Chef and I and the rest of the Grand Banks crew were up pretty late that night, settling final details from the night, prepping for the next night and entertaining the media. I think Chef and I probably fell into bed at about midnight for our first night sleep aboard Sanctuary.