The night had been quite blowy last night but the hook had held steady but we were up and about early and left False bay feeling sprightly and looking forward to seeing Lottie in Comox. With a fairly fresh wind from the NW we shot across the Straits of Georgia again to the south of Denman island with a very happy captain.

Once we had entered Baynes Channel in behind Denman island though, the wind was funneled down the channel right on our nose and with the tide against us we trailed to a miserly 2 knots progress. By now we had been going about 4 hours and with only 10km to go we were hoping we would be roughly on time to meet Lottie around 4pm. How wrong we were! As we continued to push up the channel at under 3 knots we became increasingly frustrated. Once we had crawled past the Denman Island Ferry we decided to try and sail. This did pick up our speed to a more respectable 4.5 knots but with the wind blowing directly from where we wanted to be, we were having to tack constantly! Having made only 2.5 NM in an hour we gave up going back and forth and continued our miserable trudge under power towards Comox. After another 2 grinding hours we finally puttered past Goose spit with Comox marina in sight. No out of the Baynes channel we were finally making reasonable progress but as we passed the spit we went through a field of seaweed which dramatically slowed our prop. Worried of damage, but too tired after struggling on for over 9 and a half hours we pushed on towards the Marina. We could see Lottie now standing on the dock as we made our final approach. I overshot our dock though and so put the boat in reverse, promptly running over our dinghy that we were towing. The engine made a horrible noise and I quickly dropped it out of gear. I looked down and the dinghy was almost under the boat. I had caught the dinghy's towline on the prop and wrapped the prop! As we drifted away from the dock, no more that 20 yards away, Lottie stood and watched helplessly. Heidi quickly ran forward and had a crash course on dropping the anchor and then, once stationary. I dived overboard to look at the damage. Two of the dinghy's shackles had torn off and the rope was well and truly wound around the prop and shaft. I took a knife and after ten minutes hacking away, the dinghy was free and the rope clear of the prop. On a visual inspection the only damage seemed to be a missing zinc but we didn't know if the wrap had warped the drive shaft. We restarted the engine and gingerly engaged gear, praying that there would be no further grinding noises. Thankfully though there was no other damage, other than my pride, and after 10 and a half hours we finally reached the dock.

Waiting for us was a tired Lottie with our new GPS signaling device (Spot X) and another three hour jorney back to Victoria once she had handed this and a couple of other items over. After a quick dinner ashore, Lottie left us and we crashed out after a frustrating day on the water.

The next day was a hot one. We decided we needed to recoup our energies before our next journey; the longest stretch so far to Campbell River (over 30 NM) with no options to stop in anywhere else. We spent the day, mostly inside the boat avoiding the heat and doing a bit of admin.