Rescued!

We arrived in Nanaimo in good form around 1 PM. The anchorage was only busy. It wasn't insanely busy. Which is to say, we found enough empty space to give the boat room to swing.

With plans to meet friends from Victoria, we entered into an episode, which I can only describe as a (potentially dangerous) keystone cops moment. We set up the dinghy with the outboard and headed toward town. Midway through the channel, the outboard died. I'd convinced myself it had plenty of fuel, figuring if it didn't, we'll just row - better than refueling and smelling like gasoline for the rest of the afternoon. Well, it ran out of fuel.

Worse, when we started to row, we discovered that one of the oars was broken. The paddle would allow a couple of strokes and then turn on the shaft giving no purchase at all. So attempting to return to Quiote to resolve the problems, we got into a rhythm: row a couple strokes, adjust the oar, row a couple, adjust, row, adjust. We were making progress when the paddle dropped off the shaft and floated away. It was really important that we get a hold of that paddle.

But we never did. It got further and further away from us no matter how hard we stroked with the remaining oar. We were fighting 20 kits of wind and an unknown current. We realized later that it was probably not moving at all. It was the dinghy that was being blown out of the anchorage.

In the end a passing boat rescued us by towing us back to Quijote. I don't know what would've happened if they hadn't. We're being blown toward town, so eventually, we probably would've ended up where we were going, but that was by no means certain, and then we'd have had no way to propel ourselves back to the boat.

Meanwhile, our friends Anne and Chris were still waiting to meet us in town. We expedited by taking a ferry across the channel from the Dinghy Dock Pub next to the anchorage.