Lovely Sail to Charles Sound (20 February)

I motored out to Blanket Bay in the evening of the 19^th February, a quick trip with the day breezes having done their dash. A reasonable night sleep on what has become my regular mooring to pick up, and in the morning into the Blanket Bay Motel to fill up with water and burn my rubbish. A chatted to a couple of older chaps were staying there for a couple of days, and left them having a leisurely breakfast. The forecast was for Northerly 20 knots, so I wasn't sure how far I'd get, but I planned to nose out of the heads at Thompson Sound and if necessary head back to Deas Cove. The wind hadn't yet built so it was an easy motor out through Thompson Sound. Outside the sound, the wind was around 15 knots of NE, I had been hoping for the wind to be slightly from the west so that it could be one tight reach up to Charles Sound. But on the nose it was, so I pulled up the main and let out the headsail and settled in for some tacking up the coast. It was a lovely sail – one large tack out and back in and one smaller one took me to Hawes Head at the entrance to Charles Sound, passing Nancy Sound on the way. The wind quickly got up to around 20 knots but the direction stayed reasonably constant. Heading into Charles Sound I expected to need to motor to the mooring, but the day breeze took me within half a mile of the mooring, which was down in Gold Arm on a fixed line tucked behind Catherine Island, a beautiful wee spot. With a great day of sailing (on the nose I wouldn't normally say that's great, but given I didn't have far to go and was under no time pressure, it was great), I tucked into a very late lunch/early dinner. The only slight downer to the day was damp sheets – some water had somehow again got into the bilge below my berth, so I had a wee job of bailing and drying the sheets and squabs as best I could before I curled up in bed for the night.