Interlude - Butchart's boat trip

Took a boat Sunday, down by the sea

It just felt so nice, you and me

We didn't have a problem or a care

And all around was silence, everywhere

So go the Supertramp lyrics. But it was a Thursday a couple of weeks ago that we finally took the little boat trip out at Butchart's. We've been thinking about it since last year and since weather was perfect and nobody had booked the boat tour, we took the first one at 11:00 am. There was just Glenn and me, the captain and a trainee. The captain, it turned out, is the ex-husband of the woman who owns Butchart's! He has worked there over 40 years for 3 owners.

The tide was out. As I came bopping down the ramp to the boat and went to snap a photo, the change-camera-battery warning message came on. That was ok because we have a back-up but, horror of horrors, it was dead too. (The first photo was taken another day.) I did manage to eke out a couple more photos from the dying battery.

The electric-powered boat is only a year old and is nice & quiet. We went out from the dock and turned left in Tod Inlet. We circled around the end and then came out to, I imagine, Brentwood Bay. I've been out there a couple of times before, decades ago.

We didn't see much wildlife. The seals weren't on the rocks, the eagles and the purple martins had left the area just recently. I was glad! Imagine how frustrating it would have been without a functioning camera. There were jellyfish around - small whitish Moon Jellies I think they are called. Apparently there was a different type, a big yellow one about three feet across by the docks, but it happened to not be there on this particular morning. Lots of starfish were in the water though.

The captain told us about how they didn't use to charge admittance to the gardens in the winter. Owner at the time Ian Ross would walk around the grounds and decide whether or not there was enough colour to warrant a fee. But then, as houses started filling in along the waterfront, parents would send their kids into the gardens to play which resulted in a bit of damage so they started to charge year-round.

We heard a bit about the history of the area too. One story was about the native band living near the Brentwood Bay docks who told a tale generation-after-generation of a time that the water rose so high they and the animals had to stay up on Mt. Newton. Other people didn't take this legend seriously until Ocean Sciences opened up at Pat Bay and they found evidence of a collapsed moraine or something that caused a tidal wave. Interesting.

That was just a lovely outing and it made Glenn long for his sailboat. He says:

I happened to ask the captain if the boat was a 20 footer cause it looked to be the same length as the Cal 20 sloop I used to own. He said it was and that he had owned a Cal 20 also. "A grand boat!" he said and then we went on to compare how much each of us had paid for our boats. It was a trip back in time to feel the swell under the hull and look over the side through the clear water to the sandy bottom and remember anchoring in various coves. When we were saying goodbye at the end of the trip I said to him, "I want my boat back!" and he grinned, knowing exactly what I meant.

Back in the gardens, a worker was pruning this hedge. I love that they do this by hand without electric tools.