SAILING, THE BEST CANADA DAY!

Loooooove the water, the sound and the smell of the ocean. For this Canada Day long weekend I was invited to go sailing with some new friends. I was a bit concerned with being sea sick as usual, but gravel is wonderful, though it makes you so drowsy, but better sleeping than throwing up??, hahaha.

The captain, an experienced sailor and racer organized it all. We all brought enough food to feed ourselves for many days, it would have been OK had we ended up lost in a far away island! So we left of Saturday morning for 3 days of fun and relaxation. The forecast was horrible.... rain, cloud, doom + gloom. As this is Vancouver and we had a long, wet and dark winter it was a bit disappointing but heck...that's the way things are around here so might as well enjoy it rain and all. To our surprise the weather turned out to be just PERFECT (at least for me). Not too hot and not cold at all, and it didn't rain! surprise, surprise, as usual the weather forecast was wrong....

We sailed for 4 hours to Tug Boat island, part of the the Flat Top islands. This tiny island was donated to the RVYC by a member (nice, eh?), so it's for the exclusive use of the club members. It's small, it takes about 1/2 hr to go around. It's really beautiful. There is no sand on shore, only sand stone with the best patterns and formations on them. The first time I saw anything like it was when I was in school, one of my photo teachers took us on a field trip to Galiano Island (close to TugBoat), I took lots of pictures, draw them in all sorts of mediums, made imprints from the rock, etc. I love those rocks.

Textures of rocks, barnicles, sandstone formations

On the way there Claus set up a hammock hanging off the boat. That was the best way to enjoy a hammock. Overlooking the ocean, hanging over the ocean and getting frozen all around the body at the same time - it was windy! - but freezing or not ... great! The sails came up for about 1 hour, the rest we went w/ the motor. For the middle stretch we had plenty of sun.



















We had lunch on the way to the island. Yummy polsky sausage and poppy seed croissants, roasted pork loin, olives and gravol.


We arrived to Tug Boat island moored and went to explore the island. Took a look at the club house were we would go dancing salsa later on. Went for a hike, and then all of us prepared a feast for dinner. YUMMY!! Fresh baked salmon, rissoto, salad, appetizers, and for dessert fresh fruit w/chocolate and fruit tarts. It looked like tooooo much food but we managed to eat most of it! That night we ate at the terrace overlooking the dock and the island in front.

We had a spectacular west coast sunset. Once we were on our own at the club house, music came up and we danced salsa for maybe a couple of hours. It was a lot of fun! Then we went to sleep.




















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Aaaahh! I was so concerned about snoring (others and myself). Well, snoring should have been the least of my concerns. I should have been more worried about Edvard Munch....

My dreams are usually vivid, active and in dolby stereo, but for a long while I haven't had (or remembered) ANY dreams at all. And it just happened that Saturday night -perhaps I was too relaxed- I had a very, very, very bad nightmare, don't remember what it was. But I managed to scare the living hell out of my friends with an after midnight screaming show -according to them. I don't recall anything, so I guess I can have a good laugh at that. The people from the other boats probably thought there was something really kinky going on in our boat..... ;-) If they still talk to me after that one, I guess all is fine.....HAHAHAHA

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The next day I woke up way to early. It was probably around 5. I thought it was 8, but the clock in my ipod was 3hrs ahead. So as the whole bay was asleep I went for a nice loong walk around the island. Saw some deer, and chipmunks, and a seal, and put my feet inside the frigid ocean water, and sat and just enjoyed the quietness and the smell of the fresh ocean first thing in the morning. Then I got spooked and kind of ran back to the showers, nobody was around so I was able to get ready in peace and relax some more.

A little later on I went back to the boat and I was reading my book, and then everyone else came out. We had a nice breakfast, boat-made Nutella and lemon/sugar crepes, VERY good....I've never tried lemon/sugar ones and I liked them a lot. After breakfast we went for a short boat ride to Rock...(something) passage. There we anchored the boat and just floated the rest of the afternoon....oh! the life. We were supposed to swim to shore, a few hundred meters, but it was way to cold!!! I managed to swim around the boat twice, HAHAHA, heck the water was cold! Can't wait to go to Acapulco!! The boat was slowly pivoting around and when the tide came in we were much closer to shore. Barbara swam to shore, but nobody else. I just got into total relaxation mode, maybe next time i'll go to see the oysters and mussels that live in the tiny island. After a whole day of being total ocean slugs we went back and had dinner at the pub of the adjacent island. I had fish and chips. It was yummy.

Claus and Jim moored the boat and went back to meet Barbara and I at the pub. They took a couple of dingys. It was so funny!!! One dingy had a motor so we were supposed to be towed back to our island but it didn't work! hahaha. So poor Jim ended up rowing us back. Then we danced for a little bit and went to be before midnight!! Gosh, everyone was very tired, doing nothing can be rather exhausting. No nightmares, i heard the snoring concert for a while....gosh! everyone snores, so then i went to sleep and just died.
Next morning everyone got up kind of late. We had a great brunch and then headed back to Vancouver.

We had a great weekend. I enjoyed it very much. The change of scenery was great and being out in the water, all the fresh air, the sights and the company was really good. Maybe some other time I'll have the chance to do this again.