Barry and I spent the weekend out on a sail boat, what a novel concept! A wonderfully generous friend of ours offered us his boat for the month of August. The boat is called Morning Star and it is an Aloha 27. It is rather beamy which means it has a lot of room below, which is great for Barry.
Barry was a bit worried about getting on and off the boat, not wanting to try and get into a dinghy, which can be tricky at the best of times, when you have a newly healing hip, it can be downright dangerous. I brought the boat up to the dock and Barry just had to step on, he didn't step off again until we returned to the dock.
He had a bit of trouble getting in and out of the V-berth on Friday night so on Sat. he just slept on the settee and that seemed to work just fine.
We had a wonderful time, we went out with another boat and they came over for dinner on Sat. night and on Sunday morning I went canoeing with Helen. We headed away from the boats towards a little island. Helen had been over there the night before and she had noticed smoke coming from the island, not wanting to intrude she did not investigate. I suggested that maybe we should make sure there wasn't a fire, but then again it was just a small island and if it burnt the fire would not go anywhere else as there was quite a bit of water between that island and the next. Helen said she would like to check it out because if we didn't she would always wonder. We went ashore and sure enough, there was a campfire that someone didn't put out properly and the sod was slowly smoldering. There was a couple of plastic bags in the canoe so we did our duty and poured water all along the edge of the fire. There was a tree, that had it's roots burnt and it had fallen over and the fire had consumed some of the needles. It had rained on Sat. morning so the fire was just slowly spreading. I like to think we saved that island. It seemed like a popular spot as there were several fire pits as well as areas that were quite trodden down where people had pitched tents. We certainly did our good dead for the summer and I can add another line to my resume.....fire fighter!!!!!
We had the best sail back. The wind was behind us at about 20 knots and as I mentioned the boat is beamy, therefore quite stable. We flew the main and the furling genoa and Barry very ably piloted the boat, wing on wing all the way down Yellowknife Bay. She just flew, hitting 6 1/2 knots with the waves just pushing us along. Barry got some colour in his face and I got him away from that nasty office where he spends way too much time.
Helen is going to send me some pictures from the fire so you will see what I mean. Another camera in my care has bitten the dust. The battery connection does not seem to work. It will not open any more and when it does it tries to tell me that I need new batteries when I have just put brand new batteries in. I tried all my tricks to get the connections to work but no luck, I guess cameras just have a hate on for me, it obviously can not be anything I could possibly do to them.