Stern Tied

Today was a long day. Forty-seven miles over eight hours. The wind started off light but built in the afternoon to around fourteen knots. It's finally beginning to exhaust itself at 8pm. Tomorrow afternoon is forecasted to be more of the same… wind out of the south in the afternoon. After that the picture looks very different. The wind will come from the north on Tuesday, so it'll blow against us. That will motivate us to make our northerly intentions happen tomorrow, rather than on Tuesday, as we probably would have done. We have two extra days to burn, so we have options.

That's different than last year's situation when we were held for several days at the south end of Georgia Strait by big waves built up as they were pushed from north end of the strait to the south. This year we're already near the north end, so the waves don't have as much fetch to grow. Last year we burned our extra days waiting for the sea state to improve. This year we won't have to do that. The sea state at the north end won't deteriorate as badly as it does at the south end for the reasons stated.

Arriving at our anchorage at 5pm tonight, we went to work on a stern tie to shore. I have five hundred feet of polyprop line for just that purpose. Polyprop line floats, so it won't get wrapped in the prop. Mick and Bek (sound like a comedy duo) rowed the dinghy ashore and wrapped the line around a tree. Then Yoshi and I hauled on the tag line to pull the end of the main line back onto the boat. The result is the line tied to the boat that goes to shore, around a tree, and back to the boat. In the morning we just pull on the line to retrieve it without going ashore.

I marinated and bbq'd 2 lbs of salmon for dinner tonight with rice and broccoli. It turned out well and we ate it up. We have a lesurely start tomorrow. I'm not doing a very good job of keeping to my own itinerary. We're two days ahead and not staying at the same anchorages. Oh well.