10. September 2009, Pirate's Cove

On my first day, the 8th Sept, here at my official floating dock dedicated to the 'Park Host' - yours truly - there was not much hosting to do. The Cove was almost deserted, and the few boaters inside had hunkered down in their cabins, nobody in sight above deck. It had started to rain in earnest shortly after I tied up.
I came down thick, heavy and noisily for almost 24 hours. The only sign of life anywhere came from the dog people, doggedly taking their charges from ship to shore through the cascading rains after ladling buckets of water out of their dinghies.
Yesterday, after drying up somewhat, we all enjoyed our daily 'entertainment anchoring' interlude: an obviously novice sailor who demonstrated a new anchoring technique.
He evidently tried to shore tie and he barreled towards the rocks. He threw his anchor overboard whilst charging full speed ahead dodging one fishing trawler by a nose and avoiding another boat by a hair's breadth.
But the subsequent sudden stop and jerk of the anchor grabbing slew his boat into the trawler anyway.
A lot of driving forward, backing up, fending off boats - all with the anchor down and perilously close to shallow water - scraping alongside hulls, snagging of another boat's anchor chain, some more careening before he followed some freely and loudly given advice to hoist his anchor and 'park somewhere else' (from the boater whose trawler had been 'nudged').
I had rowed out to help, but kept my distance, he moved too unpredictably to get close and I did not want to be run over.
Finally, he hauled his anchor up, whilst still driving forward, and now free of it he backed towards the rocky shore.
He started to untangle his stern line at the same time.
Somehow, some audible advice got him to stop his boat - luckily it was calm as the proverbial millpond.
Finally, another boater with more guts than I took his now untangled stern line ashore and secured the boat there - at least he couldn't run over anybody now. Then the helper realized that the front end of the boat was no longer anchored, so all the shore securing did not do much to fix the vessel in place.
He got through to the hapless skipper to SLOWLY drive forward against the pull of the stern line and drop anchor away from the shore.
With some final adjustments he was snug, between his sternline and his anchor - to the relief of everyone in the vicinity.
Turned out, that it was the same boat, which had been searched for by the Coast Guard a couple of days ago, it never answered radio calls.
The coast guard seemed to be aware of previous antics, boarded them after 'finding' them at long last in Nanaimo waters, inspected them...and let them carry on to be (in the crazy boat's skippers own words) a 'Hazard on the High Seas'.
Well, maybe by magic they will take the newly required Boating Operator Competency exam (20 minutes, multiple choice questions) and get instant experience and instruction that way. This morning they left early, he pulling at the stern line, and wife pulling at the anchor at the same time. The boat was strung in between, neither moving back nor forward, and they could at first not figure out - why.
They finally realized that they had to let the stern line GO, to give slack to pull the anchor UP.
Everybody watched as they headed through the narrow shallow gap out of the Cove, full speed, dinghy perched upright on the bow (??) - but they got out without hitting anything nor anybody.
Still no WiFi, so no photos...weather glorious again, going to visit Brother XII's Farm to see if I can find his hidden cache of gold bars.