North Coast: Week Five: Coming Home

As luck would have it, as soon as we dropped Ken and Cherie at the ferry terminal, the weather forecast began to look up. On our cruise south, we had nice weather and were able to enjoy sunny days...a welcome phenomenon.

As we travelled south, we were able to enjoy the good weather and calm seas. My folks, who travel much faster, left Ocean Falls at the same time, and spent their days fishing in various nooks and crannies, as they waited for us to catch up!

We were entertained by humpbacks, as we had been on most days of our trip, and also had the pleasure of seeing a pod of orca near Malcolm Island. WE spent our evenings in beautiful Fury Cove, in Blunden Harbour, in Port Harvey (with the Pictographs), and finally at Kelsey Bay. We had the wind at our backs for most of this time, and were lucky enough to have some fabulous sailing as we made our way on this final leg of the journey.

As we neared Campbell River, we decided that we would spend the next few days in and around Desolation Sound, as we didn't wish to be home earlier than planned, and thought we should take advantage of the weather. We were in no rush to be home to the inevitable stack of emails, phone messages, bills, and work.

But Renova must have missed her pals at the dock, because just as we entered famous Seymour narrows, good ol' Perk (our engine) started hunting again, where her RPM varied up and down. We were able to quickly shut her down, and were thankful for our outboard that we had strapped on the transom. John expertly reached over and gave a tug on the pull cord...only to find the pull cord break in his hands. With only a couple of expletives...he quickly got to work fashioning a make-shift pull cord and had the outboard running in only a couple minutes. And soon after, he had made adjustments to the injector pump, and we were running under both engines as we pulled into Discovery Passage. Our plans of lazing around for the next couple days were shot. We pulled into our marina, found a slip adjacent to a new portion of the dock, and quietly crept up to the house with only our keys and wallets. And just like that, it was over.

As luck would have it, Pierre and Danielle, were able to track us down in Campbell River, and we enjoyed a dinner with them at the house, treated to orca swimming by in the channel. What a great end to a great holiday.