Sailing (and why we don’t) – the last word.

A couple of situations:

1. Going for a Hike: You decide to go for a hike so you hop into the dinghy, head over to the trailhead and tie the dinghy line (the painter) to a tree. Unfortunately, you forgot to check the tides before you left so when you return from the hike, the dinghy (which weighs 100 lbs or so) is sitting on the ground and the water’s edge has moved a hundred or so feet away. You could a) wait for a very long time for the tide to come back in or b) start lugging the dinghy to get it back in the water.

2. Exploring a lagoon: There are three lagoons on Cortes Island. We decided to explore the lagoon in Von Donop Inlet so we anchored just outside and headed over to the entrance of the lagoon with our kayaks. The entrance to that lagoon is like a little waterfall going in when the tide is high and a little waterfall coming out when the tide is low. The plan was to go in when the tide was high and come out when the tide was low. On the way in we watched a dinghy with a fairly substantial outboard motor struggling to get out of the entrance. That was interesting.

The lagoon was fun to explore but it turns out that it isn’t that big so we decided not to wait for the tide to change to return to the sailboat. The water was way too fast to paddle against so I dragged my kayak out the entrance along the shore. Julie hadn’t brought her water shoes (since the plan had been to paddle out) so I tied my kayak line to a tree and dragged Julie in her kayak out the entrance as well. It was all very interesting.

Mom had a saying when she went to the symphony and heard a piece of music that was a bit too high brow: “That was very clever but not very interesting”. In the case of our sailing escapades I would rephrase that to say: “It was always very interesting but occasionally not very clever”.

We had a lot of fun and interesting sailing over the years – some lovely places in Desolation Sound and the South Gulf Islands even though we weren’t always clever. Now we are older but still clever enough to realize that our sailing days are over.