[Public-List] Canada Day cruise

[Gordon Laco]

So there we were…  despite my son Rob’s upcoming wedding (two weeks away now) being an all hands on deck campaign prepping their house for moving in before the day, I decided I didn’t want to miss another opportunity to take a mini-cruise in SURPRISE.

So off we went Saturday morning over to the marina from the club, topped up the fuel tank with a squirt of gasoline (repeatedly reassuring various marina staff that we really really want gas and not diesel) and a pump out, off we went.  Oh what a lighthearted feeling having one tank full and the other empty gives one at the start of a trip, even a short one.

The very light air being easterly (once upon a time a rare wind heavy with portent of doom, but now strangely common) and on the nose, we elected to motor while having our second cup of coffee and breakfast in the cockpit.  I nudged the Atomic IV up to 1300 rpm which after slow acceleration resulted in 6 knots on GPS and knot meter (oh how pleasant when they agree… and they should after the cursing and muttering during the hour I sweated to calibrate the knot meter…).   I looked at the main inside its cover wondering if I’d remembered to ease the outhaul after last wednesday’s race, and sadly that’s about the last thought either sail received.   There was virtually not a zephyr Saturday and Sunday… we were a motorboat for the whole trip.

So back to the trip.  Away we hummed clucking our tongues at the monster homes slowly but steadily replacing the more modest summer places on Midland Point… more modest and no doubt beloved by two or three generations of families who’d owned them.  At Rod’s PERCEVERANCE, swinging on her mooring we scanned his windows to see if he was home to return our wave… didn’t see him so as has become my practice since the day a number of years ago I ran the boat up on the clay bank just north of his place, we veered east a bit to miss it.  As usual I noticed my wife glance at the depth figures above the speed display on our instrument; and I answered her unspoken reminder with ‘ya, ya,  I remember’.

Up and out of Severn Sound, past Gin Rocks where many years ago my late friend and mentor Richard Price had put HMS BEE, the historic schooner gunboat I succeeded him as Captain aboard, on a ledge.  I think of it as ‘Richard’s Rock’.  There was no drama, and Richard made hauling her back off the seamanship exercise for the evening, but the pundits ashore hit the panic button.  Well it’s all funny now.  I miss Richard.   He served in the Royal Navy at the very end of WW2 and was present at the Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay.   One time while I worked at the historic site, we hosted senior executives from Mitsubishi who were visiting their local television tube factory and there was Richard in his RN Captain’s uniform, circa 1815, to show them around the schooner.  He was about the same age as the Japanese businessmen.  Things were going well but I saw Richard frown.  On their side, the businessmen were standing in an odd attitude, heads back and looking at Richard over their cheekbones.   Richard said sharply to the interpreter ’Tell them I saw the flash at Hiroshima’.   What?  ’TELL THEM!’.   She did, and instantly the attitude of the visiting businessmen changed.  They all four of them relaxed suddenly, made a slight hissing sound and nodded their heads to Richard.

Afterward I asked him what that was all about.  He said ‘I recognized that look they were giving me, and I didn’t like it’.   That look was disrespect.   Richard laughed once that he reckoned he was in more danger as a boy growing up in war-time England being bombed than at sea in the Navy, but that wasn’t true.  He never talked about the hard side of the war till near the end of his life.  I wondered that he could have experienced such horrors and still been the jolly sailor I knew him as, until he began talking to me about the not-so-funny parts of 1945.

So back to Canada Day 2023. Onwards up around Adams Point, and we set course to pass south of Giant’s Tomb Island, so named because it looks like a giant’s tomb from any angle one approaches it from.  There’s a reef off it’s southern tip, guarded by a green pin off the last bit of rubbish which is called ‘Bennett Rock’.  Bennett is one of those marks I swear the Coasties move, because it never seems to be where it’s expected to be.  This time I outguessed the thing and it appeared bang on the nose.  

Another memory came back to me, of another passed friend, this one served in the RCN from WW2 up till the mid-1960’s.   Bill’s first ship was what he described as ‘an elegant English cruiser from the Great War’.  HMS DIOMEDE was tasked to patrol the deep South Atlantic looking for German commerce raiders… and being an old girl thrown back into service in 1940, was without radar.   Just as in the days of Nelson, she’d go to action stations every morning before dawn because they never knew what daylight might reveal.  Bill taught me how to spot things visually; he’d learned that as a young naval officer in a ship without radar.  ‘Visualize what you’re looking for… concentrate on what it looks like in every detail as hard as you can… then open your eyes and look for THAT.  You’ll always see it sooner than if you’re looking for something undefined’.  I do that all the time and when spotting marks it always works.  And I always say silently to myself ’Thanks Bill’.

So Bennett Rock behind us (my one certainly covers ground when one is doing 6 knots directly where you want to go… maybe there’s something to this motor boat thing (STOP THINKING THAT!!! STOP IT RIGHT NOW!!!)  a decision pressed.  We were bound for Christian Island… should we go north about Beckwith Island, or south about…  South about always seems more exotic for no good reason, but north about is shorter so we altered course to something like 290 and away we went.   Beckwith Island is shaped like a dumb bell, with the northern lob very small, and the southern one rather large.  A narrow treed isthmus joins the two, making an east side anchorage and a west side anchorage.  The east side is for some reason attractive to the loud music-sea-doo crowd in motorboats we call ’snouters’… Big Sea Rays 40+ feet long that look like cheap science fiction space ships… we don’t go there.

Round the top of Beckwith we needed to make decisions again… should we go up to Hope Island north of us (nice beach, clean sandy bottom, good holding but open to the east so rolly if wind develops from there) or down the channel between Beckwith and Christian and have choices.  We went down the channel.  

A couple miles later there we were squinting at the sky and pecking at iPhones for the weather map… the meteorologists were predicting and east to south east wind building during the night.  Perhaps Christian isn’t good… so we went into the west cove of Beckwith.   Only a few boats were there, and we had no difficulty picking a spot away from everyone and planted the hook in 20’ of water.  We could see the Bruce buried in the clean sand through the clear water.  Perfect.

A trawler yacht with the stars and stripes flying rumbled in; we exchanged waves.  This one was from Jamestown Rhode Island.  We commented again how courteous THEIR motor boats are compared to our indigenous ones… perhaps having the wherewithal to come so far weeds out the noisey inconsiderate ones.

We set about relaxing as hard as we could.  It took only three hours to come up to Beckwith and we had lots of after noon ahead of us before supper.   I rigged the cockpit awning and we each dove into books… took a quick break for lunch then resumed.  I had the pleasure of taking a nap with my book on my chest… awoke again at 1500 and invited my wife to join me on the foredeck for a glass of wine.  

A couple of hours later I rigged up the BBQ and in due course we had a terrific meal in the cockpit.   We’d have invited the Americans to visit but I didn’t have the dinghy in the water yet, and on their excursions they didn’t pass near enough, so we didn’t.

Sunset was incredible, although we had the sober thought that although there was no whiff of smoke in the air as we’d had from the distant forest fires, no doubt that incredible red sun going down was due to some smoke being about.   We retreated to the cabin with cool air coming in through the screens and vents and I read aloud from the last of the twenty Patrick O’Brian novels while Caroline knitted, listening.  Reading the series right through in order is called ‘making a circumnavigation’ and we’re soon to finish another.  Aside from very much appreciating O’Brian’s writing and the subject, being hired as Lead Technical Advisor for the movie twenty-one years ago was a turning point in my career.  Our Alberg 30 was already named for the ship in the series of novels, but still, that was an incredible two years during which we made that film. Master and Commander was my 12th film, and there’s been something like 50 productions since, but still that was a salient one I’m proud of being part of.  (I’m proud of others too, but in some cases I just held my nose and sent in my invoices… haha)    

During the night, we enjoyed Canada Day fireworks, mostly from the other side of the Beckwith isthmus.  We chuckled that the noisey crowd don’t pay attention to weather forecasts so only good sailors were on our side… and they were good neighbours.  The cheering and singing ended about midnight but was never obtrusive, being OVER THERE and not over here.  The only thing we missed was a repeat of an incredible experience we had some years ago on the Christian Island side when someone played our National Anthem on a saxophone at sunset.  Stunningly beautiful… oh well, it would have been a miracle if it had happened again.

Dawn was as lovely as sunset.  We enjoyed a loon organizing its breakfast diving and swimming around us.  We had our own breakfast watching him (not fish; pancakes and ham).    While we ate there was a stir of air from the east, and I resolved to sail SURPRISE off her anchor; but while washing up the air became still again so we ‘lit the fire’ and got the engine going, plucked up the anchor which came in chain and hook both clean as a whistle from the white sand, and away we went.   1300 rpm… 6 knots… all the way home.  

What a great weekend.  No sailing, but a great mini cruise regardless.


Gordon Laco
426 Surprise

www.gordonlaco.com
705-527-9612