Slow living has its benefits: enjoying the small moments in your daily life, being more conscious about your surroundings, spending your day purposeful.
It’s about making choices to scale your life down to what means the most to you. I have heard somebody saying it’s “… to be anchored in the present moment”, which – being a sailor – seems very appropriate.
Slow teaches me patience; a gift especially at times when things are out of our control. Everything is moving slower when you are living on a boat: from hand-grinding your coffee beans for your freshly brewed espresso in the morning to jumping into the dinghy and cruise around in the bay to find cell phone reception to perform “Happy Birthday” for your brother’s special day.
Leaving the Sunshine Coast, we crossed the Malaspina Strait for a quick overnight stop at Sturt Bay on Texada Island, leaving Desolation Sound at starboard on a brilliant sailing day to Cortes Bay. Next stop of our exploration of Cortes Island was Squirrel Cove where I had a very rewarding conversation with a long-time resident of the island. I met Jack sitting on the “public” dock by the bay, wasting time.
He acted surprised when I approached him asking him how he is doing; it only took a few awkward moments and some more curious questions from my end and he started to talk about his life as a former fisherman who is now on disability pension and is struggling with the inflated cost of living on the island. He still seemed happy and content when he told me that there is no other place on earth where he would rather be. Torsten joined us for the later part of the conversation trying to tickle some local knowledge on harvesting clams and oysters out of him. He assured us that WE can eat whatever we find on the beach – just he wouldn’t.
We continued through Lewis Channel with the intend to discover Von Donop Inlet but changed our minds and headed for Drew Harbour on Quadra Island where we anchored for a few days, enjoying the sublime scenery of Rebecca Spit and the snow-capped mountains as the perfect backdrop.
It was also on Quadra Island where we experienced some unexpected acts of kindness – all triggered by the repeated failure of our dinghy engine. Two young fishermen towed us all the way from Heriot Bay back to the boat, dismissing our objection that we would be OK to row the last mile with “we started this together, now we go all the way”. Thanks guys; you are awesome.
A short ride later we arrived in Pender Harbour. It had been three years since our last visit and as we came around Francis Peninsula, I remembered why I had so many fond memories of this amazing labyrinth of islands and bays on the Sunshine Coast.
It was just two days later that we were faced with the same issue again: getting to the spit for a walk was uneventful, going back left us with only one option: paddling against the waves. Somebody took pity on us and offered to help by hanging on to their dingy, an invitation to good to refuse. Being close to the couple in the boat next to us, we learned that we received assistance from a pro: Esther Allen was BC Ferries first female captain until her retirement six years ago and when we offered to repay her for the kindness, she just shrugged it off, waived goodbye and asked us to pay it forward. You bet, Esther!
We are now ready to head North, aiming for “The Broughtons”. The dinghy engine has been serviced in Campbell River and we just finished provisioning the boat for the weeks to come as we are heading into more remote cruising grounds with limited access to everything but nature.
