![[Photo: the Healer]](shealer.jpg)
In which some shopping occurs... The Canadian equivalent of news... The boat is not quite dashed upon the rocks...
Sidney Vancouver Island 1998 Aug 05 Wednesday
We didn't all head off to breakfast at the same time. Lea was still showering, and would catch up. Piaw got distracted by the pretty marina views, and set up his tripod. He would catch up. As we walked towards the breakfast place, Scarlet remembered that she wanted to look at some beach shoes she'd seen in a store window the night before. I figured that shoe-shopping with Scarlet would be more fun than holding down a table in a diner, and tagged along.
We were in a 5-and-dime-style store which had a supply of beach shoes on sale. We chatted sleepily as she tried some on. My mind was drifting into a pleasant fantasy, of a world in which I could go into a store like this and have a hope in hell of finding shoes in my size. I must have looked kind of out of it. "You don't have to wait around, you know," Scarlet said, "I can handle this. You can go for breakfast." I snapped back into reality, made a dismissive gesture, which didn't quite knock a decorative thermometer off of the wall. "No worries," I said, reining in my hands before they destroyed something. Scarlet made an unreadable face, grabbed a pair of shoes, and headed for the checkout line.
Heading back towards the restaurant, we almost walked past a yarn store. "Uhm, I was just going to go into this yarn store," Scarlet said. She seemed kind of embarrassed. "Hey, the Canadians have yarn? That's so cute," I replied, following her in.
Scarlet said she was working on a wedding quilt as a gift for a couple of friends of hers who had gotten married. I said that was pretty cool. Yeah, she said, except that they'd gotten married two years ago, and she was still working on the quilt. Miss Manners says you've got a year after the wedding to cough up with a gift. I pointed out that Scarlet was only running 100% over schedule, which wasn't that bad. "All I've got done so far is one square!" she wailed. It occurred to me that when you look at the words, the only difference between "quilt" and "guilt" is the twist of a loop, one purl gone squirrely, one hook gone crooked. I suggested that she present the couple the fine gift of a "wedding potholder." Scarlet scowled and said that she wanted to get her friends nice gifts. I shook my head. I'd just been talking to my cousin Nancy. She'd picked out some great gifts for her technician's birthday. Now she felt pressure to "top" this previous accomplishment, and all her co-workers now expected great gifts from her. I explained that this was a good way to put oneself into an awkward position: "Screw that." Dazzled by my rhetoric, Scarlet lapsed into silence and concentrated on her choice of yarn, looking over the mohair selection. When we got to the diner, the rest of the crew was there.
It was a slow breakfast, in a relaxed community. Lea marveled at the fact that they served tea hot in a pot. "It's the right way to make tea," she exclaimed.
We looked over a Canadian newspaper. (Canadians have their own little news. It's so cute!) A local pol was facing a third recall attempt. Some folks were mad at her because she wanted to "amalgamate" a lodge. In this context, it seemed that "amalgamate" means to nationalize.
Piaw broke in on an interesting conversation about American breakfast foods (the origin of the hobo sandwich (which consists of a slice of bread with a circle punched out of the middle, an egg in the hole, fried) and its name in other regions) to talk about something completely different. His hands seemed to be shaking. I looked down at his tea. Uh-oh, was our skipper getting whacked out on caffeine? I watched him for the next couple of hours, but he seemed to be calm enough.
In the newspaper, someone from South Africa was making a statement. They said that the "First Nation" (Canada's cute name for Native Americans) shouldn't really compare themselves to the natives of South Africa. Maybe the "First Nation" didn't have it easy, but the native South Africans had had it worse. Lea said that it had felt strange in Botswana, knowing that just five a few miles away, there were camps surrounded by guards. Lights played over the camps, jeeps rumbled around, dignity had been replaced by atrocity. We were quiet for about a minute after she said that.
We talked about our plans for next time. Next time we'd give ourselves two weeks so that we wouldn't always be in such a rush. Next time we'd bring along a crew to take care of all this sailing stuff so that we could focus on relaxing. Next time, we'd just rent an island. Piaw had heard that, in the Carribean, you can rent an island (with staff) for less money than a sailboat. This was starting to sound like about my level of laziness.
Photo: While the rest of us got groceries,
Lea went to the Harbormaster's office to pay fees.
In her absence, the rest of us joked that
we should dawdle,
giving Lea a chance to seduce a
handsome dockboy.
![[Photo: dock attendant]](dattenda.jpg)
All areas of the marina have a minimum depth of 1.5 meters...
"Discover Sidney," (A packet of coupons and lies)
Breakfast over, we bought some groceries and then headed back to the boat.
The slip was tight, with the wooden dock on one side, and stone shore on the other side and not much room to turn around. This was going to be a hard one to pull off, I thought. Well, time to get the show on the road. We disconnected the electrical cord, and I started up the engine. The boat was hand pushed backwards to clear the boat ahead of us, and then I kicked her in reverse. This was going to be just like a three point turn, only boats can't really turn on a dime, and there are crowds watching. To sink my boat in front of tourists out to see Mt. Baker out over the San Juan islands was exactly what I signed up to skipper this boat for. The boat inched ahead slowly as I pulled her to the left. Then as she headed right for the rocks I pulled her back towards the dock. Hey, this is working. Then I tried to turn her to the left again, but the stern kicked backwards from the inertia of the turn. Good grief I can touch the rocks, that's how close we were. Nothing to do now but to rev the engine and give her the full thrust forward. Wee! Out from the rocks. The Healer sails another day! It wasn't until two days later that Scarlet and Lea told me that had actually heard a scraping sound from the bottom of the hull as I pulled her forward and away from the rocks. Thank goodness I hadn't heard that, because powering out of that situation was exactly the right thing to do.
We putted slowly out of the harbor, and then headed away from the nice clean marina that we had spent a night in. I headed the boat South, and then asked for sails to be put up, so we could sail in the light wind. We had a full charge on our batteries, I was happy, the mountain was out, and I wanted to see the rest of Sidney spit. So we made our way slowly South.
I tried steering again. This time the wind was coming from behind us. Under these circumstances, it's much easier to steer the boat without making a mistake that causes sails to swing around and things to break belowdecks. It was fun. Scarlet confirmed this: "On a beam reach, you don't have to fight the boat so much. Boat's don't like to head upwind. They're lazy."
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