![[Photo: some purple flower at the Buchart Gardens]](buchpurp.jpg)
In which the crew arrives at Sidney, not quite destroying any boats... Some of Piaw's gorgeous photos from the Buchart Gardens... Some especially lame tourists...
Sidney Vancouver Island 1998 Aug 04 Tuesday
We tried to raise Sidney harbor via the VHF, but succeeded only in confirming that our VHF was mostly broken. I looked at a few pictures of the marina which Larry had kindly found in the chart kit, and proceeded towards the marina entrance while Scarlet and Lea tried to hail the marina, to no avail. It wasn't until another boat helped to relay for us that we could get through, and even then we were breaking up. Oh well. We furled the jib and powered into Sidney port marina, right into a queue of waiting ships. Everyone was crossing customs today, it felt like, and we had to line up for the customs slip. While we were waiting the boat ahead of us started backing up. Great. We had to backup but unfortunately the main was still up, catching enough wind to drift us sideways and I had to turn the boat tightly around to avoid hitting other boats. The crew scrambled to bring the main down afterwards, but the incident still left me sweating.
At last, a customs slip cleared up, and we docked the boat. I got off with the boat information and walked up into the customs dock. No customs official in sight, but two poles with telecommunications devices on them. I walked up to the open one and spoke, but that resulted in my voice booming over loudspeakers. Oops. I guess it's the one with the line behind it. I stood in line and waited for my turn, and then was connected to a pleasant-sounding female voice on the line. I gave her information as she asked for it, and in return she gave me a customs clearance number, which I was to write down on a piece of paper and paste to the windshield. "That's all?" "Yep, that's all, and have a great day." I could deal with this. What a far cry from getting my panniers searched during my first bike tour. I guess sailors are supposed to be rich and therefore not looking for trouble.
While Piaw was waiting for the phone, the rest of the crew waited on the Healer. Suddenly, a boat came up close and someone called out, asking if they could raft with us. You remember what rafting is--that's when one boat ties up to another. We wanted to be friendly. I, for one, had no idea of what to do. "Uh, sure! But what do we do?" The other boat pulled up, the absurdly tan young lady from the other boat handed me a line, and I was able to tie it up on our boat's cleat. Both front and back, our boat had a cleat on both port and starboard. The dock was to starboard, so our starboard cleats were busy hanging on to our dock lines. But that left our port cleats free to tie up the other boat's dock lines--which had become rafting lines. I'd been so worried about rafting, but it wasn't bad at all. That boat's absurdly tan young skipper went off to wait in line for the phone while Scarlet and Lea talked to the absurdly tan young lady. Piaw came back, and eventually the other skipper came back. We untied the other boat, shoved it away. It took off, and soon we were able to get away.
I then got a dock assignment, and we headed off to dock. Sidney port marina, now that we had a chance to look around, was an exceptionally clean port, at least, judging by our American standards. As we powered towards our slip, everything felt clean and under control. We were therefore non-too-surprised to find a dock boy at our slip waiting for us to hand him our lines as he pulled us in. Amazing. Once docked, we ran around getting things together as we prepared to disembark. Lea chatted to the dock boy as I dock a picture of him. Pretty soon, we were locked up and prepared to head off to our first stop--the rest rooms. I was out of the rest rooms before everyone, and hence took the opportunity to pay for our dock space as well as get tokens for our showers (C$40 total). While so engaged, I also heard that at Sidney port marina, the dock boys deal with the pump out, rather than the clients. Full-service indeed, though there was a price attached. If only we had known! I got a bus schedule, directions on how to get to the bus station, and then proceeded out, where the others were waiting. Given the arrangements of the bus schedule and the timing, we decided to see the Buchart Gardens first.
A quick lunch (though not quick enough, as we missed the bus), and then we spent an hour waiting at the bus. I took the opportunity to write and mail off some postcards. Once on the bus, we chatted about advertising, Thieves & Kings, and various other literary art forms. At the Buchart gardens, we paid for the entrance and proceeded to the flowers. I've been to the gardens twice before, and not being a flower kind of person, would have been bored on the third time. However, I had my camera and a macro lens. So I played photographer instead. Larry took his time walking around jotting notes. Scarlet checked off flowers from a brochure, indicating which ones we had identified. Lea took great pleasure in managing to photograph Larry and I while playing our respective roles.
Two ill-dressed tourists walked past. Their clothes bespoke an interest in plants at the expense of good taste. He was in new shorts, a woven leather belt, and a floral pattern shirt which seemed to be at once over-colored and drab. The fabric looked like it was intended for the upholstery of furniture for the blind. She was in an outfit made of frighteningly similar material, her hair held stiff in false blond splendor. He, looking around, asked, "What happened to Debbie?" She replied, "Oh, she's still hanging back." I thought, "Yeah, so she won't be seen with you." This is the sort of thing I took notes on.
There was an artificial lake, which looked pretty--there was an overgrown cliff on one side and trees on the other. You could look down on the lake from a cliff. The whole thing was spoiled though, by a huge tacky fountain at the bottom. Still, some of the tourists seemed impressed. "Got to get me one of them." "We'd have to get a bigger yard." I remembered what my cousin Nancy had said about engineers liking aerospace musea and the like while biologists preferred arboreta. Maybe the tourists in this area were engineers. Somehow, I doubted it.
![[Photo: some (tobacco?) flowers at Buchart Gardens]](buchtbac.jpg)
Piaw was taking pictures using his tripod. I'd been impressed as I watched him walking through the crowd with this tripod attached to his backpack. He'd kept one hand on one end of the tripod and had moved pretty quickly without whacking anyone.
The thing about hanging on to the tripod is something you learn after wacking yourself with the tripod a few times by accident. But the reality of it is that it isn't as hard as it looks, and some of it was probably inspired by fear of someone making off with that tripod.
Now that he was using the tripod, he was having trouble. There was a knob, used to tighten something into place, which was too tight. Piaw called me over and asked me to apply behemoth force. This looked like a job for someone with strength, i.e., not me. But I happened to have something better than strength. Out of my pocket, I took the finger-strap of a yo-koosh. (A yo-koosh is the product of the unholy union between a long elastic cord and a koosh ball. I guess you're supposed to use it like a yo-yo. I'd destroyed mine. Thus, I had the finger-strap in a pocket. Are you following all this?) It was made of a stretchy fabric with a good grip. I put it around the knob and gave a twist. It worked like a charm. "I can't believe you went travelling and didn't think to bring one of these," I crowed, waggling the strap in his face. I continued, "Heck, otherwise you'd have to look around for a little rubber band or something." I looked down at my feet. There was a little rubber band. Piaw picked it up and wrapped it around the knob, ready for the next time.
In the rose garden, Lea talked about the "777" rose. This was a new breed which had been named in honor of the newly-designed Boeing 777. A bunch of Boeing folks had got these roses as celebration gifts. The rose was described as "somewhat fragile."
Photo: This rose is not, as far as I know, a "777".
![[Photo: a rose at Buchart Gardens]](buchrose.jpg)
It had turned into an incredibly hot day, and the crowds did not help. But we eventually made it into the Japanese garden, a good place for us to take Totoro pictures, much to the amusement of some other guests. Near the end of the day, after the tripod had been folded up and I was quite finished, we split up to perform our respective duties: gift shopping, flower identification, and postcard writing.
![[The Reverend Totoro ensconced in a bit of greenery at Buchart Gardens]](bucht_sm.jpg)
I entered the gift shop, elbowed my way past the seed stand, shoved through the crowds arond the floral-motif dishes, wriggled past the mob howling for Buchart Garden sugar spoons, and found my way to the postcard racks. I was immediately flabbergasted by the poor level of photography displayed. I'm no photographic expert. I have the best camera that I've ever seen by my standards, but those standards are based upon the number of attached penguin stickers. Yet, even I could tell that these postcards were crappy.
Lea was looking around the shop for a gift for her mom. She, too, had dismissed the postcards as ugly. All the clothing was gaudy. In the end, she didn't get anything. There were coffee-table books containing photos of the gardens. They'd been translated into many languages. Scarlet asked, "Should I get this Chinese book for my dad?" I think I muttered something constructive about lame pictures transcending language. I was watching Scarlet purchase a not-quite-so-gaudy-as-the-others t-shirt for her mom when Lea came running up, and said, "They're holding the bus for us." Scarlet hastened her purchase and we went running through the milling crowds of tourists, through the scenic parking lot, and up to the bus.
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