Going back to my last post, I think I retired very shortly after writing it - my first night on the boat. I'm sure I was a little wired with excitement about sailing home the next day but I also discovered that the diesel heater on board is pretty noisy. So much so in fact that I couldn't even contemplate sleeping in the aft birth as was my plan (David was already out cold in the V-birth). Whatever the reason, I had a fitful sleep and woke up at zero dark thirty the next morning. David was up early as well and before long we had the coffee pot on and the marine charts out. A little later Michele, our sailing guru for the trip home, had arrived at the marina and I got started on a bacon and eggs breakfast.
With the requisite mariners breakfast out of the way we headed out of Departure Bay and pointed toward Vancouver Harbour. As we expected there wasn't much wind in the strait so we motored for a good couple of hours. David and I had plotted a course on the chart that morning but our heading seemed to be at odds with what we saw on the horizon. After a bit of head scratching and consulting with the chart plotter/GPS we realized that our plot was correct and the fog on the horizon was distorting our view of our destination. After a while the wind came up sufficiently to take a crack at sailing and soon we traded the gurgle and throb of our 24hp Yanmar diesel for the blissful near-silence of running downwind under sail. We took turns at the helm the rest of the way home, enjoying our first sail on our new boat.
By the time we got to Point Atkinson in West Vancouver we had burned up most of the day but thankfully the fog that had hung over the city that day had burned up too. The wind died in English Bay so reluctantly we brought in the sails and motored the rest of the way home. It was an impatient ride home as we raced the sunset at a ponderous 6 knots. As we finally rode beneath the Lions Gate bridge we were treated to a dramatic red sunset - a sailors delight as they say. Unfortunately have I have no further photos of the evening as my phone died.
It was after dark when we finally rounded Prospect Point and pulled into our slip at Coal Harbour Marina. David's daughter and her boyfriend were there, along with his young son, to welcome us. We managed to get her into the slip and tied up without much drama and so ended a long awaited day. One of our best in a long while.
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