Sincerely, Denise

 Thursday, June 19, 2025

The mechanic showed up this morning to assess the diesel heater!! Yippee. However after 2 hours of trouble shooting he could not seem to fix it so pulled it out of the boat and took it back to his shop to see if he could repair it. While this was going on I did my grocery run since we will be out for a week on the anchor so had to stock up on fresh produce, which went pretty quickly. Grocery store drama. The checkout lady admonished me for putting two different items (in this case, asparagus with 2 jalapenos) in the same bag. She looked at me and said “DON’T do this, I just have to dump it all out of the bag” to which I replied, “I was trying to minimize my use of plastic produce bags”.  She just glared at me and kept checking. Sheesh, someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed.  Remember yesterday when I listed all my mistakes so far??  Here’s #5.  While unloading the groceries back at the boat, I accidentally bumped into the touch controls on the oven, I heard the beep but didn’t think anything more about it because often I push the buttons by mistake with my hip but it’s never the one that turns the oven on. Except, apparently, this time. A little while later I am puttering around the galley finishing up wrapping all my produce in green bags when I say to John “I smell something burning” thinking it had to do with the diesel furnace repair. He says “is your oven on?” and I look down to see that OH CRAP yes it is!! As previously mentioned the toaster lives in the oven and I was pretty sure this was going to be the last of that toaster. Using a hot pad I gingerly removed it from the oven to let it cool off. Later when it had cooled, I plugged it in and attempted to push the lever down but it was clearly impaired. That’s when I also noticed that the dial on the front was melted and disfigured. The toaster was toast. It was 20 minutes to go until we had to check out of the marina, so I set out on a very brisk walk (1.5 mile round trip) to go buy a replacement so I guess the good part of this story is that I got an excellent cardio session!  Let’s hope there are no more mistakes on this trip. We cast off shortly after 11 and made our way over to Prideaux Haven, our home for the next several days. It was a beautiful calm cruise all the way. The entry into this area is backdropped by a stunning theater of high peaks known as the Unwin Range, which jut straight out of the water to heights of over 4500’ – still snowcapped this time of year. It is very dramatic and on a clearer day than today you can see all of the peaks. We pulled into Prideaux Haven first to a spot we were hoping to snag only to find it occupied by 4 boats rafted together. Darn. We then found a spot in the main harbor, threw down the anchor and affixed a shore tie to one of the government installed chains ashore. Within the hour the wind whipped up, again on our beam, and John decided it was best to release the shore tie and just rely on the anchor. The holding in here isn’t always the best so it’s better not to stress the anchor any more than necessary. By evening the wind had died down, the sun was out intermittently and quite warm at times, I love to sit up top with a glass of wine, listen to nature, enjoy my surroundings. Tonight’s dinner was hasty because John had a board meeting to attend via Zoom. I overcooked a pork tenderloin, so it was disappointingly dry. Fish food. This harbor in the heart of summer is wall to wall boats, being one of the busiest and most populated anchorages. I counted 11 boats in our midst so clearly it’s still early in the season. I am sorry I don’t have any fishing news or anything more interesting to report. I am sure many of you are bored to absolute tears.

The can marking the reef off of Cortes Island appears to have been struck by 

a boat or maybe just one too many sea lions onboarded and it collapsed.

This was the view crossing over to Prideaux Haven, beautiful sunny skies and flat water

As we got closer you start to see the snowcapped peaks