AUTUMN

Just in the past week, autumn has begun to arrive in Fulford Harbour. It's been rainy and dismal, but it was nice after supper on Friday night so we went out for a little dinghy ride. Little wisps of fog chased us around the bay ...
... but we know we may not have many more evening dinghy rides before the nights start closing in on us, so it was lovely to be out there -- the calm, the quiet, and the smells of the ocean, mingled with the cedars ringing the harbour, were all lovely. And what a nice place to come home to. Cruising past the 'village' ....
... to our little corner of the world...
On Saturday mornings, we have a bit of a routine. Michael has to go in to Victoria to do a little janitorial contract we've hung on to (it's nice that it's for our son, too!), and the longer we live here, the less he likes to go there -- so he takes the 6:15 a.m. ferry so that he can get done and be on the 1 pm ferry home. It's still dark at that hour now, so I drive him to the ferry and then drive across the bay to Drummond Park to watch the ferry leave. This weekend, by the time the ferry left it was just light enough to get a picture ...
Then I usually drive in to Ganges .... grocery shopping, the market and doing laundry take up my morning. This weekend the West Coast Work Boat Rendezvous was happening in Ganges -- it's always interesting to see these beautiful old work boats mostly now converted to pleasure craft -- and our old friend Maryann from Parksville (one of the charter members of the Association) is always there, too.

The Rendezvous also marks the end of the 'summer' moorage season in Ganges. Once all the work boats leave on the Sunday, folks who are waiting for 'winter' moorage are generally hovering around like vultures to get on that particular dock -- it's first-come-first-serve, and it's *really* inexpensive, so there's a lot of competition! At 8:30 yesterday morning, the 'Kanaka,' a well-known local boat, left the harbour authority dock across from us (where he spends the summer) to cruise in to get his place there ...
... and our friend Mike began his journey, with some friends from Galiano, to do the same thing.
We drove in to meet him, and 'caught up' with him near the Salt Spring Sailing Club docks ...
(By the way, that big old fish boat behind him is the 'Tyee 1', another little piece of BC history, at over 120 years old and still floating!). Here's the boat that was the 'posture child' for this year's Work Boat Rendezvous -- it's called the Torhavn, and I don't know much about it except that it sports an Easthope engine!
Anyway, we got Mike all settled in his new 'home' in Ganges and then went for lunch with him, his friends Jeff and Audi who had come with him, and our friend Maryann. (Jeff and Audi, by the way, own a sailboat called 'K So' and Audi tells the story: "Jeff starts every question to me with "k, so.... are we going shopping?" "K, so, what's the plan?" 'K, so, we're buying a sailboat?' so I decided that should be the name of the sailboat we bought!" And then they named the dinghy 'Let's Go!')

So we had a nice day in Ganges, but had to get back here because the first wind storm of the season was roaring in, and we wanted to check on all the boats.

In spite of all that 'out there' activity, I did manage to have some quiet time right here, and FINISHED the 'Entwined Hearts' shawl. Here's about a fifth of it, in all its unblocked glory...
Today I'm going in to Ganges again to the knitting circle that meets in the winter months there, and I'll try to get someone to model it for a better picture!

It's pouring rain and windy out, again -- I think I'll go refill my coffee and cozy up to start a new knitting project!