It's astonishing how one lifestyle can pass so seamlessly into another. How quickly the small luxuries of home are taken for granted, how easy it is to fall back into the familiar groove. I'm sitting here with my feet up after my first day back at work, the dogs are sprawled around me as they are accustomed to doing, I am looking at the same ornaments, wall hangings, pot plants and I really have to wonder if I ever went away. Then I start to read a cruising friend's blog and it all comes flooding back...

I think that there may be an unconscious reason why I left this blog hanging at the mouth of the Juan de Fuca strait. The following 12 hours were not much fun. I will rewind to Naomi's last blog, when we were entering Juan de Fuca Strait with one tenuously functioning engine and one that was going to need a haul out to repair. Fortunately a westerly wind was able to nudge us gently up the strait, but as we were swallowed by an enormous fog bank the winds lightened considerably and we had to reluctantly fire up the engine. We were still on the U.S side of the shipping lanes and with several in and out bound ships plying the straits, we had to head across at right angles towards the Canadian coast to get of the danger zone. This was essentially 'flying by instruments', a situation that filled me with stomach knotting unease given the uncertain health of our starboard engine. The big ships are legally required to have AIS, but what of the smaller boats perhaps not readily detectable on our radar? As our chart plotter showed Race Rocks half a mile off our port beam, the AIS indicated a cruise ship exiting Victoria harbour. We were outside of the shipping lanes and it was our fervent hope that the cruise ship remained in them. With the powerful thudding of it's engines heard clearly above the noise of ours, the cruise ship passed half a mile off our starboard beam...and yet the dense fog completely obliterated what must have been a ship blazing with light.

We entered Haro strait and gradually lights started to become visible on the shore. Our engine was sounding like it would cut at any moment so Tommy switched off and the next couple of hours we drifted in Haro Strait, while he worked on the engine and I watched for shipping. The engine situation went from bad to worse and would cut out after a few minutes of running. As a beautiful morning dawned in Haro Strait with not even a whisper of a breeze, we reluctantly decided to call our good friend Alan from Piers Island to give us a tow. Was this how our years voyage was going to end? Being towed to the dock? Phambili's pride (and ours) would not allow it. With a bit more tinkering, the engine started to purr and purr some more and so, by the time Alan and Kaia pulled up, we were a self propelled vessel again.

Fueled up, custom check-in over, we headed across to Canoe Cove to an unforgettable homecoming welcome at Doug's dock. A crowd of familiar faces stood behind an enormous hand painted banner on a dock that was sinking under the weight. Up the ramp in two chairs sat my less mobile parents just beaming. An emotional reunion with family (including my sister Julia who was flying back to South Africa three days later) and good friends ensued with much clinking of glasses charged with champagne and orange juice. We felt truly blessed.

And what now? We return to life in a community we love and will continue to live vicariously through the blogs of cruising friends we sadly left behind and one day when the beckoning whisper from yonder seas becomes a roar, we will perhaps set sail again.