Day 27-28 of the 1st Voyage: In which we make a big decision, change our course, and the Deck Boss gives new meaning to “Breakfast of Champions”.

As we while away the hours here in CRBC (as the cool people call it…well, us at any rate), it has become fairly obvious that a change of plans is in order. We are already a week behind the group travelling up to Alaska and we most likely have another week to look forward to in this garden spot, so we have opted not to go to Alaska. And truth be told, we’re not that upset by it. We’ve all been to Alaska, albeit on cruise ships and, in the Captain’s case, aboard commercial fishing vessels. We’ve snapped the photos, taken the whale tour (apparently you DO have to buy a ticket!), and bought the souvenirs (best damn beer bottle opener ever!). But we have grander schemes—Alaska and the Inside Passage were meant to be our shakedown cruise (although we were hoping for a 5.5 as opposed to a 9 on the Richter Scale)—and now we are free to pursue them. If we can ever get out of CRBC.

Those that know us (there you go, rolling your eyes again), know that our dreams lie beyond the Pacific Northwest. We want to head down south to San Diego then hook a left and keep on going. We want to experience the open ocean—vast expanses of blue water and bluer sky—and explore places that are so far removed from what we know that it will make our former lives seem unreal. We want to have adventures. And we need to do it while we’re still (fairly) young and naïve, lest fear hold us back. The Captain likes to say, “Life begins where the land ends.” In other words, sometimes you have to lose sight of who you were to become who you know you really are. Wait, what? Ooh. That’s deep! But it does come down to this: life is inherently full of risks and every day you don’t step off the curb and get hit by a bus is another opportunity to have an adventure. The bigger the adventure, the bigger the risk. Sometimes the risk pays off, sometimes it doesn’t, and sometimes you get stuck in Campbell River for two weeks, but either way you’ll have a really interesting story to tell at cocktail parties.

But I digress. Now that Alaska is off the table, the tentative plan once we get out of here is to mess around in Desolation Sound, explore some of the islands, head back down to the San Juans, continue to not see any orcas, and gradually make our way back to Everett. Once there, we will do a haul out and take care of the last few items on the maintenance list and if everything is shipshape (finally got to use that old cliché!) we will make our way out toward the coast before the legendary fog sets in around the end of September.

Until then, however, life in CRBC plods on. The brightwork is underway, we await shipment of our manifold, and Basic French Lesson 3 has been completed (although we all agreed that lessons should be held before lunch, as it’s hard to parle un peu Français when you’re in a food coma.) That being said, we did have an unexpected event. During breakfast, the Deck Boss suddenly exclaimed, “It’s gone!” I told her she had nothing to worry about as there was more bacon in the freezer, but she was in fact talking about her filling. At least it started out as a filling, then it turned into a cap—no, a crown. Yes, a crown. Wait a minute. Never had a crown on that tooth. Tooth! The tooth is gone! Well, half the tooth at any rate. Whatever it was, it was gone. Time to find a dentist. Much like their American counterparts, Canadian dentists have an aversion to working on Fridays, but after a few calls we found one that could not only squeeze her in but was within walking distance.

Now, the term “walking distance” has always been a source of contention among the crew. If the “walking distance” is 15 minutes, the Captain will get out his stopwatch and aim to take five minutes off that time. I’ll generally tack on a couple minutes only because I’m easily distracted (is that an orca?). The Deck Boss will take that 15 minutes, multiply it by 2, add 17, subtract it from her age, then add an “ish” to the end. On particularly hot days, “ish” can add a full half hour to the journey.

But she’s a trooper and walk to the dentist we did (and under a particularly hot 85 degree sun I might add) where they fixed her up nicely and gave her a “temporary” cap that she could wear until she could get a proper crown. (I put “temporary” in parenthesis because the dentist informed her that the cap would be good for approximately 2-3 years. Would it be that all things were that “temporary”?)

So what happened to the tooth? Well, let’s just say the bacon was mighty crunchy that morning.

Editor’s Note: We'd like to send a shout out and a big “thank you” to Dr. Fran and her staff. If you’re ever in Campbell River and find yourself in need of a dentist, they’re awesome!