Mike & Bettys "Grand Boat" - The Duke
View to Sabine Channel from Friends Bay
Cattails growing on the Rocky Island
Glorious Sunset from Friends Bay
The arrival of our grand boat, "The Duke" - is exciting. CJ (our son) has spent all of his former years boating with mom and Daddy and is ready to sail away on his own.
We meet up with Gulf Island, Funtime and The Duke in a little bay north of Jervis Island in Sabine Channel. This bay has been nicknamed "Friends" Bay as it has no name on the chart. It appears quite exposed and if you do not anchor correctly in the back of the bay, it is. We rocked all night long with swells from Sabine Channel and at 5:00 am when the noise changed, I went up on deck and to my horror, both our dinghy and Funtime's dinghy were gone. Gulf Island still had her dinghy firmly attached, but the other two were nowhere to be seen. I quickly awaken the group to notify them of this turn of events and we put on a pot of coffee and wait until first light to go search. We immediately report to Coast Guard the missing dinghy's incase they are floating out in Sabine Channel and are a hazard to navigation. Were they stolen? How come only two of the three dinghies were gone? Coast Guard advises us to contact the RCMP and report the missing dinghies for insurance purposes......
At first light, we get CJ to fire up The Duke and ask Scott to take the puppies to shore prior to going out on the big search. We are theorizing about the disappearance and are in denial about tieing up the dinghies too loosely in that they would float away....surely they must have been stolen! Scott is gone a long time with the one remaining dinghy and the dogs are anxiously awaiting a pick up on shore to come back to the boats. When Lo & behold, out of the surf comes Scotty towing in both of our dinghies. They are sitting gently bobbing up and down on the other side of our little island.....
We do not know how they escaped, let alone together and past two stern lines and or a very narrow channel behind our boats, but we do know that they stuck together and were neatly awaiting to be picked up. A very strange episode indeed!
The island is very diverse in flora, on one end of our little island, there is a marsh with cattails and frogs, on the other end, there are succulant plants related to the cactus family and flowering thistles and crickets. The island is perhaps 150 yards across (a Large rock really) with one side having arid like conditions and the ocean side has marsh like conditions.
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