Well, I spent a beautiful weekend at the Oak Bay Marina, at the service dock for Gartside Marine. They solved the mystery of the overheating engine—the seals on the heat exchanger were shot and salt water was mixing with the coolant and had clogged up the space between the small copper tubes that the cold salt water flows through, where coolant normally flows to exchange its heat for the cool of the ocean. So the cooling wasn’t happening as efficiently. It took the weekend because they needed to soak the heat exchanger core, the copper tubes, in acid to free up all the salt. So Jura is now ready to head back to sea, motoring through the calms of the gulf islands. It was a really pleasant weekend, visiting with friends, walking, kayaking, reading in my hammock, talking to people on the dock. It’s nice to be around people again! It’s been a long stretch of solitude, and it’s nice to return to civilization in such a beautiful place, in the heat of summer. I’m very grateful.

As you can see from the photo for this post, it was very shallow at the Gartside dock, and only possible to get in and out at high tide. Today was a zero tide and Jura sat in the mud for about an hour at low tide. Luckily it’s very soft mud. A new experience.