"Shall we, Shan't we" - indecision on the way out and buddy boats
he wind kept blowing strongly into the evening and, with our exposed position, we ended up keeping an anchor watch until midnight. As the winds died down though we settled down for the rest of the night, uninterrupted.
The next morning we woke and the winds were a bit calmer. After a hasty breakfast, and dodging many fishing boats, we started our big push up the west coast. As we emerged from Beecher bay there was some swell and choppy confused water and we decided to head further out trying to find something a little more settled - but boy were we wrong. Within minutes we were back to hobby horsing all over the place and digging the bow under the waves. We were still doing 6 - 7 knots though so we soldiered on in the hope that it would improve. After 30 minutes of this punishment though there seemed no let up. After a quick conference we decided that perhaps the west coast wasn’t going to be for us this year and turned tail for Race Passage.
As we headed back towards Beecher bay though, we saw another sailboat, inside the disturbed water making better progress. We cut back through the messy stuff and came alongside and hailed her. SV Cora Lee was another BCA boat heading up and so, seeing they were pushing on we joined up with them.
Inside the messy water the going was much smoother and we stayed close inshore heading up to Port Renfrew, As they day wore on we had lovely weather and, although there was a stiff breeze (15 - 20 knots) right on the nose, we made good progress at about 6 knots. There was fog around but thankfully it stayed away and by 3pm we were turning into Port Renfrew. There was still a stiff southwesterly all the way into the back of the bay though and so, after a couple of pirouettes working out if we could drop the hook we decided that the marina looked a safer options for the night. With a fuel dock as well we took the opportunity to top up the tank and then had ‘quite the moment’ trying to move off the fuel dock and finding a slot to tie up to. Even inside the marina there was still a stiff breeze and as soon as Be true got side on to the wind we were blown all over the place in very close quarters to many other boats. With help from the crew of the Corra lee we managed to get in though and could finally meet our new found buddies.
