AAAAAHHHHHhhhhhh .... I needed that

(WARNING: Picture-heavy post...)

We are back from our little jaunt out to Albert Head. It was quite an adventure, I might add! A fitting way to celebrate the ten-year anniversary since we bought the Wind Walker.

Don't forget to enter my CONTEST, by the way...

So we had two glorious days at Albert Head (have I mentioned how much I love it there? It's only half an hour from our harbour, and here's the view of the city from there...)


I said I'd get much knitting done, and I did .... I started my second 'Interlude' Wrap (that's a .pdf of the free pattern, if you click on it)and I'm about a third done already. I donated a blue one I knit to Afghans for Afghans, so I'm keeping this one for myself.

Here's a close-up of the pattern ... I love it, and it's a relatively easy knit. I'm doing this one double-stranded -- one strand of merino laceweight, and one of a merino-nylon fingering weight blend.It'll be perfect for September evenings!


I also started a test knit for a Whistler designer who hand-dyes all her own wool, and it's beautiful. This scarf is called 'Shifting Hues'...


Here are some of the sights from the anchorage:


And I took these from our dinghy:



Oh, and we had company for one night, too ... Mischa and River went off camping for the long weekend but Jeff had to work Monday, so he brought Gibson out to us Sunday night for a 'sleepover.' Jeff drove, and we dinghied, to the beach at the Albert Head Lagoon parking lot...

It was lots of fun to have Gibson aboard overnight!


Jeff drove back out to get Gibson when he got off work yesterday, and it's a good thing we didn't have a two-year-old to contend with, because ...

... at about 7:30 pm, the wind came up to about 30 knots, and for some reason, our anchor slipped and we found ourselves only about 30' from the rocks. (The first night at anchor there were some 'rollers' curling around the point, so Michael put out a stern anchor as well, to hold the bow into the waves. We've safely anchored at Albert Head many times in more serious winds than that, so we're not sure if that stern anchor somehow fouled the bow anchor, but we also ended up with rope wrapped around the prop, and had to cut the stern anchor free). It was about 7 pm., so we simply pulled up the bow anchor to move back to our original spot to re-anchor.

Twenty minutes or so later we realized that we had dragged again, and we were now only 15' from the beach shore -- it would have been a softer landing than the rocks, but still not our idea of fun! So we up-anchored again, and decided (foolishly, in hindsight) to head back into the harbour and come home.

Well. We were hitting 8 to 10' rollers coming out of the Head and then severely 'confused seas' with about a 4' chop and whitecaps the whole way home -- a 45-minute passage of serious anxiety! Luckily there didn't seem to be any damage to the prop, and the port engine worked great the whole way. But - I had dishes on the floor, books fallen out of the bookcase, and salt spray over my front window by the time we got in. Not a pleasant ride at all, but at the time we thought it was a better idea than not getting any sleep at all because of not trusting our anchor!

I was smart enough to insist that we not try to come under the bridge and get in to our marina with that wind blowing, though, so we spent the night on the main docks at the Empress Hotel, which I always enjoy - especially when I'm relieved to be tied to a dock! This morning at 7 a.m. we woke up to the sounds of LIVE MUSIC coming from the legislature lawn a few hundred yards away -- Canada Day celebrations were underway, of course! A little too loud for our liking, especially at that hour, so we were back on our own little quiet dock by 9 am.

I still have pictures of the Tall Ships Festival AND the FibreFest to share -- more tomorrow. :-)