Smoke on the Water
The plan was to get up early today and get to Little Current as soon as possible. I had set my alarm for 6am and when it went off Captain rolled over and said “It’s too early, it’s not even light outside yet.” True, our berth wasn’t nearly as bright as it should be and all I could see from our hatch was dark red! The morning sunrise was gone and replaced with the thickest smoke I have ever seen. We are, sadly, getting used to the summer fires up here. I think this is the fourth summer in a row I can remember where we have had a few weeks of terrible air quality due to the raging fires in Canada. It is super sad and honestly has affected the mood of the entire area. It is eerie. It is so thick you can smell it, as if there is just a nice campfire just off shore. It is concerning for our health and there really isn’t anything we can do about it. We don’t have masks and even if we did, we don’t live in an A/C world out here. We would have to wear them 24/7, which just isn’t practical. For our family, we accept that for a few weeks a year we end up smoking the equivalent of a few cases of cigarettes. I console myself thinking at least it isn’t 40 years straight of smoking a pack or two a day, just a few days. Our thinking is controversial, but trust me, I have spent one too many hours in my life trying to determine what is important to me and I feel strongly that just about anything, anytime can hurt or kill you and I simply just can’t avoid everything. I’d rather be outside living then inside dying. I’m more upset for the environment and those helpless to escape the fires, especially the First Nation People who live in very remote parts of Canada.
Our sail was nice and gentle to Little Current. Eerie as our friends glided past us in the thick yellow/orange sky. We were able to listen to the Cruisers net show at 9am and check in for the first time. It seemed like a lot of folks were headed to Little Current after yesterdays big blow. I was nervous that we wouldn’t be able to get some time on the wall. Thankfully when we arrived around 10:30 we had no issue getting on the dock for fuel and pump out and they had space for us on the wall. Unfortunately, the current today was not little, it was pretty knarly with eddies bouncing around the wall where we needed to go. Docking there didn’t go so well as our bow got in a current and wanted to pull Cory, and then two other people, into the water. Captain actually jumped ship (with the stern attached) to go help. He caught the large metal pipe that runs the break wall on his shins and went down. Kona took the opportunity of the stern being way to close to the wall and just walked off to do her business in all the chaos. I was the only one on the boat and the boat was not secure! It was a hairy few moments, but Captain got up quickly and got a bite on the line and pulled the boat in. Thankfully it was all okay with no boats being damaged and just bruised up shins from Captain. Poor Captain. He has poison ivy on his feet, bug bites, road rash and now bruised shins on this lower legs. It’s been a rough year and I’m starting to feel it.
Did I mention the mood? Between the docking and the weather and just a string of reminders that we are very mortal I’m a little off and deep in thought. I’m doing a good job staying off the internet and starting to feel disconnected from the world back home, for better or worse. I may be a little homesick. I may be fighting my natural anxiety.
After we all composed ourselves from docking and got all our shore power hooked up to recharge everything we headed to town to do some important things.
First stop; go visit Roy Eaton. Roy is the voice of the LCYC Cruisers net that has been doing a radio show every morning in July and August for boaters in the North Channel. He is the heart of the community up here. Roy has been hospitalized for the last month and getting out Friday so we felt he may be up for some visitors.
Walking into a small-town hospital in a remote part of Canada felt like stepping back into the 80’s. No hustle and bustle, no check ins or security. It’s two stories high with a little heli-pad and wind sock on the roof. Roy’s room was just past the main entrance and down two small hall ways.
He had a visitor, his brother, when we arrived. He saw us and he just lit up! It brought such joy to my heart to see him perk up that I just ran over and gave him a huge hug. He had told me last year my smile brightens his day and I was sad to have a mask on to cover it. I have to say, his smile brightened my day. We had a lovely visit with him all while visitor after visitor came in to see him. We gave him an honorary Ciara Madeline shirt and told him we would come back to see him OUT of the hospital on our return to Little Current next week. We didn’t linger long; he had a full day of visitors ahead from what I saw.
We then walked the two blocks to the grocery store and picked up just some fresh food that we needed. Maybe some Canadian candy and wafers too.
Back at Ciara we walked down to see our friends and see when they were thinking of leaving. We thought maybe we would try and all catch the 3pm bridge. But somehow time was just flying by. We all ended up getting some really good pizza instead while the other boats did some laundry and took the kids to get some shore ice cream. We made the 4pm bridge.
The Little Current swing bridge is the only bridge that connects the mainland to the world’s largest freshwater island. It opens on the hour for 15 minutes. It is neat to go through, despite having to navigate the currents. I gave the bridge tender a blow on the conch and a wave as we passed by. The bridge is super old and sometimes breaks leaving boaters stuck on either side, sometimes for days. The only way around is going 60+ mile island, which we may as well go home at that point. Let’s hope it doesn’t break when we need to use it.
We enjoyed a light sail all the way to Heywood Island. Our friends beat us again, but we are pretty sure they were motor sailing and we were not. Saving fuel! Oh! We took 23 gallons on yesterday. We only used 23 gallons in a week and a half to come over 250nm!
We dropped the anchor with ease and got going on dinner. Since we had fresh peppers, we made fajitas. This was probably the most intensive Freeze-Dried meal we have made so far. The meat, cheese, Salsa Verde, and guacamole were all Freeze-Dried. Captain even gave the water we re-constituted the meat in to Kona who drank it all up without stopping. Dinner was really good and dishes were done just as it was time to play Last Post. Our friend Gabriel from Arabesque and his son had come over while I was finishing up dishes and offered to take us on their fast dinghy to shore which we accepted the offer.
Kona got her shore time and we all skittered back to our respective boats as soon as the last light of the day gave way to aggressive mosquitos. Cory, Captain and I settled in to watch Legally Blond 2 on Cory’s laptop to finish the night. The air quality had started to get a little better by days end but we expect it bad tomorrow. I hear it should clear a bit then and then get bad again. The wind patterns for the next week seem to shift in all directions so we may get better and worse days here for a while.
