After a great couple of days with the clan Munro, we set south towards Sidney Spit. Although everyone talks about it, we still haven’t been in to explore it. With a bit of an ebb push, we headed out, but the breeze quickly picked up enough that Elsa was becoming nervous, so I begrudgingly lowered the sails. I learnt awhile ago it’s much better in the long run to keep everyone relaxed and enjoying the trip rather than tense. So we continued on under power, with the wind intensifying as we went. The wind was right on our nose, and we saw an increasing number of bare sticks as we got closer to our destination.
Other than shallow, we didn’t know much about the lay of the harbour or the wharf, so we circled over to see if there was any space. It was pretty pitchy, and I wasn’t about to tuck in to the lone tight space on the lee side without previous knowledge of the surrounding shallows, so we ended heading back to one of the outside mooring buoys (beaten to the nearer ones by others who had also ducked in to ride out the high winds) to wait things out.
So with nothing but time to kill, we began the ‘shore transfer’; the winds were too strong for me to row the whole party, so one by one I transferred everyone ashore. On the first trip Lisa -in trying to be helpful- kept pointing out that my shore target was about 45 degrees lower than the direction I was rowing.... “I know”. After about 50 yds, she re-aquanted with the differences between Heading and CMG (course made good).
Had a great walk around the island. We did the shorter 5 km loop but look forward to doing the complete island loop (around 13km) on a future visit. As we returned I went down to survey the dock, its’ approaches, and escape routes. There were some people departing shortly, so Lisa and I went back out to fetch BoB, while the girls waited for us on the dock. Knowing that we’d be departing in the early am with about 2 foot of tide, we calculated we’d have about 5 ft of water underneath to navigate with. Other boats continued to trickle away as the afternoon wore on; it turns out the park attendants come by and collect fees from boats tied up at 1800. A couple of boats remained, but before sunset the only other boat on the wharf cast off its’ lines to head home to Sidney.... with absolutely NO wind, they’d covered about 100yds by sunset (they’re the rigged boat in the sunset picture). More Photos
Other than shallow, we didn’t know much about the lay of the harbour or the wharf, so we circled over to see if there was any space. It was pretty pitchy, and I wasn’t about to tuck in to the lone tight space on the lee side without previous knowledge of the surrounding shallows, so we ended heading back to one of the outside mooring buoys (beaten to the nearer ones by others who had also ducked in to ride out the high winds) to wait things out.
So with nothing but time to kill, we began the ‘shore transfer’; the winds were too strong for me to row the whole party, so one by one I transferred everyone ashore. On the first trip Lisa -in trying to be helpful- kept pointing out that my shore target was about 45 degrees lower than the direction I was rowing.... “I know”. After about 50 yds, she re-aquanted with the differences between Heading and CMG (course made good).
Had a great walk around the island. We did the shorter 5 km loop but look forward to doing the complete island loop (around 13km) on a future visit. As we returned I went down to survey the dock, its’ approaches, and escape routes. There were some people departing shortly, so Lisa and I went back out to fetch BoB, while the girls waited for us on the dock. Knowing that we’d be departing in the early am with about 2 foot of tide, we calculated we’d have about 5 ft of water underneath to navigate with. Other boats continued to trickle away as the afternoon wore on; it turns out the park attendants come by and collect fees from boats tied up at 1800. A couple of boats remained, but before sunset the only other boat on the wharf cast off its’ lines to head home to Sidney.... with absolutely NO wind, they’d covered about 100yds by sunset (they’re the rigged boat in the sunset picture). More Photos