The Artful Dodger - 6/9

It was a bit of slog getting down to Barkley Sound from Tofino today, but we arrived without incident.  The winds and seas were on the mild side compared to other times we’ve made longish days out into the ocean swell.  One arbiter of the violence of wave action on the boat is the over-temperature alarm at the wheel.  When the seas are big, it makes the alarm chirp at us.  This was somewhat worrisome at first as I wondered if it portended an engine temperature problem.  Thankfully the temperature gage shows normal; I’m convinced the problem is with a weak relay contact being force to close when the boat lurches, generating an erroneous error.

Today we heard no such chirping, so the seas weren’t too bad and the winds never exceeded 18 knots.  They were big enough to give Kevin a touch of sea sickness, but he rallied when we hit the anchorage in calmer waters.  There was a lot of rain throughout the day.  In foul weather, we usually have just one person at a time out in the elements steering the boat while the rest stay huddled under the dodger.

That dodger is awesome.  It’s the perfect compromise between visibility and protection.  I’ve been in boats that encase you in a protective bubble and others that give you an ear full of sea water with every other wave; this dodger does neither.  It makes keeping an eye out for logs and crab pots easy while keeping up to four people dry in the cockpit.  The helmsman... not so much.

The tide was a little lower on our way out of Tofino than it was on the way in - enough  so that we bumped the bottom on our way out.   I get the sense the depth is greater at the dock than it is slightly away from the dock.  Whatever the case, we made our exit as quietly as possible to prevent waking the neighbors as we untied from them.  We did a little skid through the mud and were on our way.

We’re in Effingham Bay tonight, part of the Broken Group in Barkley Sound.  It’s so lovely.  We’ll be cove hopping here for the next several days, before making our break for the Strait of Juan de Fuca.