Get up at 7:15, drink tea and pack up for town. By 8:00, I have the boat out front and Sally is throwing in the totes and backpacks. Seas are up a bit. It’s been blowing all night. Maybe a two foot chop. We pound over to the other island, lug totes, coolers and packs up the hill and race for the 9:00 ferry. Miss it. Catch the ten.

First stop is at General Paint for, you guessed it, paint (for the bunkhouse). No luck (we need ‘off-tints’ porch paint for the community’s meager ‘budget’). Then Canadian tire (oil, muffin tins). Next: Canada Superstore (chicken for dogs) and then the Fudge shop (Sal has a serious habit). Off to Home Depot and get the usual 6 out of ten items on the list. Average success rate this time. 8 items is a miracle. All ten? Never gonna happen.

Blitz a quick lunch at the Ideal Café and then race off to Andrew Sherrit for plumbing crap. Sal gets that while I hit up the propeller shop for two new props – one has to come up from Vancouver in a week. Then off to Western Equipment (mallet handle, log dogs, quick perusal of pulleys) and then to the bank. First the Royal, then BoM.

London Drugs is next for us. After that I go to the nearby LCB and Sal heads over to Save-on for the BIG shop. I then divert to Lordco (gas-line fittings) and then back to Save-on to help Sal load the totes and, while waiting, decant the scotch into a large plastic bottle so that I can return the stock glass bottles now rather than carry them back and forth on a small boat). LCB staff more than a bit curious. “Never mind. I’m green! Planet is going to hell! Causes me to drink heavily, being green, ya know, but at least I am recycling my scotch bottles!”

Chuckle to myself as we head up to Baba Ganoush (Syrian restaurant) for a donair and some hummus. They are closed. Damn. Then to Katies for sushi supplies and down to the ferry and catch the 2:30 back to Quadra. Just under four hours and 18 stops. Not bad.

Hit the island and put on a batch of wine at the do-it-yourself store, pick up a few cheap B flicks at the renta-movie place and then head off down the road. That is 21 stops (not counting the coffee shop and the fact that the propeller store took two visits).

Unload the truck into the boat (light load this time) but the seas are a bit up. Been blowing the whole time we’ve been away.

We live on a rocky beach. Not a beach, really. Like Point Atkinson is a beach. The tide is running hard (two knot current) and the wind is at my back at about 20 mph. As I approach our beach the waves are making the bow describe three foot arcs. Sal leaps onto a slippery rockface and turns to grab something from the boat as I attempt to hold it off the rocks by throttle and forward and reverse. We miss. I am swept down stream.

“I’ll come around! You may just have enough time to grab one item at a time!”

And that is what I do. I take the boat in as close as I dare and drift down past Sal who is precariously perched on the rocks. As the bow goes by, she grabs what she can. One hand for her safety, the other for a full cooler or heavy tote. When I go around again, I take a minute to move the other items to the very front for her to reach. Plus the boat needs a bit of a pump out each time because the waves are breaking over the stern. I am soaked by the time we get everything off. Sal has a nasty cut on her ankle.

Dock the boat. Head back to the other side to help Sal with the coolers and the totes and we bring it all up on the funicular. It’s almost 5:00. Feed the dogs and pour a glass of wine. We sit like lumps for a bit and then put all the food away. Eat store-bought sushi and clean up. It is 7:30 pm. It’s only been 12 hours since we started and we managed to do 90% of the shopping on our list.

Pretty efficient this time.