FOG!!!

7 May 2009

Caleta San Juanico

Heat strikes the bay as soon as the sun is up, hammering every surface, pouring through the open hatch and onto our faces. After breakfast, we rig the tarps we built for Central America three years ago, covering the deck and creating a cool breezeway. The water is green, still: the day glows with heat. We decide, definitively, that we want to take the boat to British Columbia. The heat is miserable, the days steaming and much too long. We stay awake deep into the night for relief. Even swimming is only a temporary solution—you feel feverish again as soon as your skin is dry.

Then, on the northeastern horizon, a band of fog appears. Slowly, as we eat lunch, it creeps into the harbour, obscuring first one shore, then the other. Now all we can see is the short stretch of cloudy air between our boat and Paul and Dee on Blue Pteron. A patch of blue sky above us, but the sun is tempered, darkened, and the damp drips onto the canvases.

Briefly, a wind comes up, tugs at the windmill, the anchor, breaks the surface of the water into millions of tiny rocking wavelets. We relax into the mercy of this unexpectedly cool air; it is as if we are being greeted by a long lost friend. Welcome to Nova Scotia! I shout across to Paul and Dee, laughing.

Imagine that: fog as benediction. It feels as if my skin, stretched too taut by the heat, returns to its usual shape and size.

Image:

Blue Pteron disappears into the fog