The Rite of Spring.

Now that the friendly cashier lady at our favorite supermarket Thrifty recognizes endives for what they are (no, these are not cabbages) and more importantly, knows how to use them in one of Belgium’s top national dishes, there was nothing that kept us any longer in Mill Bay Marina. So, the mooring lines were finally cast off and O2 was set free again.  As we sat shivering & clutching our numb fingers in the frigid air out in the cockpit, the thought of aborting the whole Alaska project did cross our minds. For a fleeting moment there, we started second-guessing our navigational course in the general direction of wolves & bears & glaciers. Indeed, we came very close to chucking it all overboard and to go for the little ice cubes tinkling in a couple of margaritas in a mellow Mexican bar instead. 

But spring has only just sprung and a whole lot of summer is yet to come. That’s how we pep-talked ourselves towards our first anchoring spot of the season: Pirates Cove Marine Provincial Park. We shared the idyllic little Cove with otters, sea lions and plenty of seals that came smoothly sliding in & out of view all around our hulls. Up above eagles were circling in slow motion. The sun came out, as did the deer, and we cheerfully headed into the woods. The Mexican bar can wait.

Next stop: Nanaimo, a weird little place, where very skilled men came to reset our fancy Integrel battery charger system once and for all. We dare hope. To celebrate this feat, we joined the local mariner community in The White Sails Brewery where the brews were tasty and the tapas even more so. 

Now that the Integrel is charging the batteries effortlessly again, that the freshwater tank has been disinfected and that all 4 winches got serviced, there was only one more thing left to do in our spring-cleaning ritual: O2 badly needed a belly rub. And we found just the place for it on Hornby Island.

The evening before beaching, we had jotted down our 10 point plan which we consequently followed through. All went off without a hitch. Actually, after having done previous successful beachings, first in Panama and then in Baja California, My Captain executes the manoeuvre with quite some swag by now.

At low tide, O2 emerged from the water like some mythical sea creature. A whole year of neglect – the water being too cold for us to go in to clean O2’s belly like we love to do in the tropics- had turned her sleek black orca skin into one huge mussel bed. It wasn’t too hard to pry them loose and within 4 hours the job was done. Locals walking their dogs stopped by for a chat and a picture of O2 who stood on the beach like a disoriented whale. They also advised AGAINST preparing the mussels, lest they were contaminated with algae that contain Paralytic Shellfish Toxins. Apparently, this does happen and when it happens, it is no joke.

Now, totally purged, O2 is all fired up and ready to go. All she needs now is for the tide to come back in.