Day 50 - Bonfire above our mast
Every morning my routine has been to wake up, naturally, before everyone else. I have been spending these morning hours typing up my log and today I realized how sacred that time has become. Alone time on a boat with 4 others is hard to find. Since we were in Little Current, Kona and I took a nice walk to the pavilion and had some quiet time this morning together. I returned to Ciara around 8am to find her abandoned. The kids up before I wake them? Before noon? Did the rapture happen and I miss something? Turns out, Captain had only gone off to use the land head and the kids had excitingly taken my left-over Canadian cash from laundry and headed to Tim Hortons!
Since I had over slept dinner the night before I was super hungry so when Captain returned we set off to support the local coffee shop where I got a really yummy breakfast English muffin and a Frappe before we headed across the street to the municipal building for Roy Eaton’s 9am show. We left a painted rock we found on Beaver Island right outside the front door thinking this would be a good place for that rock to have traveled and headed inside. We had no problem finding his new broadcast room as all we had to do was follow the voices through the twisty hallways. It was a joy to see his room packed with boaters and a little relief to find I wouldn’t have to be the scribe for the day! We all said our hellos and exchanged those trusty boat cards. There was a power catamaran couple who have a really colorful wrapped boat we saw in Killarney. They were there with matching shirts, cards and a gift hat for Roy that also matched. Their merch game was strong! They are doing the great loop and will cross their wake when they return to Florida later this fall. We enjoyed Roy’s show and most importantly gave our regards in person to Roy as we knew we would not be back to Little Current this year after we left today.
On our way back to Ciara my phone rang; Roy called to see if we had already left and I let him know we weren’t in a hurry to disembark this morning. He said he had something for me and would stop by Ciara soon. Kona alerted me when he arrived and I stepped off Ciara to give him another hug. He had a book for me, “Women on Board Cruising.” It is a compilation of stories from other women who have done long distance/live aboard cruising. He was given a bunch of copies by the author last year to give out as he saw fit and he inscribed on the inside a touching note how he felt I was amongst the ranks of these women and an inspiration. I’m glad to have something to read as my library that I picked out for myself has been hard to get into after those first two books I read. Perhaps having a full boat has lessened my ability to quiet my mind enough to read as well…
We all enjoyed a laid-back morning. We admired the eddy’s of the “little current” dancing around our boat at the dock. We toured “Blue Moon” who was on the wall behind us and we gave them a tour of Ciara. Blue Moon is a trawler and Captain and I often say that our retirement boat (when sailing becomes too hard) would likely be a similar boat. The boat was so spacious and has so many luxuries compared to any sailboat it just blows my mind. I keep telling myself there is no such thing as a perfect boat. What Ciara has, Blue Moon doesn’t and visa versa. We are so happy with Ciara and I hope she is with us a long time yet. Although I have my doubts to her ability to hold us year-round and I absolutely dread the idea of her in salt water where she will be beat daily into wear and rot that will be a constant battle.
We departed Little Current after the noon bridge traffic had cleared the channel. The weather has been just near perfect, although Captain keeps wishing for that perfect wind. We had a short sail, about two and half hours to our destination. I think we had the engine off for only a half hour while we had wind. There were many other sailboats around, all motoring. Captain got on the radio and in his best pirate voice tired to intimidate the rest of them to hoist their sails as well; always looking for a race. It didn’t work. Hahaha
We pulled into a new anchorage around 3:30. Crocker Island is right next to the Benjamins. Having been to the Benjamins three times now I really wanted to see what all the fuss was about next door. As we came in the collection of islands we were hailed by Kim’s Komfort on the radio. They could see us across the way on their dinghy. Sure enough, as we turned the corner, I could see their slick trimaran parked, stern tied, amongst a half dozen boats with space next to them. I gathered the kids for all hands-on deck as we were going to have to stern tie to shore. Having learned just a little from our first attempt I put Bert on the dinghy with me as I knew Cory could handle the anchor by himself. Bert and I went ashore to tie a line around a tree and Bert managed the line while I managed steering back to Ciara and not getting everything tied up in the prop. We are all very green to this skill, even Captain. We took our time but still had hiccups. Captain didn’t give me enough line to make it back to Ciara and thankfully another boat who was spectating (they are always spectating) came out to Ciara to grab the line from Captain to bring to us as we would have had to go back to shore, drop our line, go to Ciara and then back to shore. Eventually though we got both the anchor set and our shore tie tightened. We are 20 feet from shore!! What a strange experience for us!
Captain and I took some thank you beers over to LeLoup Marin who had come to help us with our shore tie and then took Kona to shore to scope out the island and see if there was a firepit, of which we did find one.
The kids were hungry so we pulled out the marinated steak we had made earlier in the morning in Little Current along with fresh asparagus and mashed potatoes for a wonderful dinner. While they cooked, I took some wine to both our neighbors as not everyone drinks beer and both boats had been super helpful to us either today, or in the case of Kim’s Komfort, by text while we explored Collin’s Inlet. I played fetch off the boat with Kona much to the delight of all the other boaters. Captain accidently dropped the tennis ball right off the bow. Kona freaked out crying and making the most comical howls as she didn’t realize she could jump off and swim back to the boat and the ball teased her greatly at her feet, six feet down. Eventually she got it but not after she gave the entire anchorages a concert.
We all headed to shore about 7:30 for an early smore fire. We are learning to have our fires in the early evening before the mosquitos come out and then be done shortly after Last Post. In a hurry to leave with all the gear I left my phone ashore so I was reliant on others for photos and I just enjoyed our time. We climbed to the summit area around our boat. The firepit was on the top. Captain used his chainsaw to cut standing dead trees and we made a wonderful fire with the masts of the boats at eye level! We all explored the area. The view to the south of the island was breath taking. We knew we were about 60 feet up due to the masts and on the south side that 60 feet was straight down. We marveled at the view and the gulls dancing on the wind. The kids had picked up multi-colored marshmallows at the grocery store in Little Current and were now roasting them on sticks they had whittled into sharp points as well as making huge messes all over their faces and having a grand time. Captain and his beard became like Kona with tree sap in her fur. I picked a high point with a view of the anchorage and played Last Post in the golden hour. Horns and hollers from below afterwards let me know the sound traveled just fine despite the wind up where we were.
We extinguished the fire and collected all our belongs and returned to Ciara shortly before 10pm. We now have a very efficient way of all getting down below as fast as possible to minimize letting those pesky mosquitos in. Between doing that and our trusty bug zapper the nights have been getting a bit easier.
No hurry tomorrow as we only need to move about 4 hours, but I think we may be held at our next location for three nights as we wait out two days of rain, storms and wind. I’m still really bummed that I didn’t pack my DVD remote as everyone really would love a family movie night and two full days at anchor seems like a perfect time for such indulgences. Everyone seems happy with the long days of reading and relaxing ahead so I will trust them. I’d really like to spend more time here at Crocker, there is so much to see and enjoy here. Next year I’m putting “inflatable” kayak on our shopping list as I’m pretty sure I could spend days leisurely paddling around these islands and shorelines and have some “arm hikes” rather than leg ones.
