Up to my neck in $#@!

I almost got derailed before I even started. Everything seemed just fine when I woke with plenty of time. Did a double check of gear, had a coffee, took the compost out, packaged the recycling and garbage,Yada Yada Yada.

Got to the boat to find 9, nine, yes nine river otters had peed and $#@! All over the inside of the boat. They had even tried to make off with the boat having undone the stern line. There was $#@! all over: the floor, two seats, a life jacket, the step and I am sure a few places yet to be found.

You can’t leave the $#@! there and park your boat in foreign territory (i.e. the yacht club) lest the foreign otters retaliate and your boat then becomes a moving battlefield. I used a bucket and sloshed everything. Trudy came to help and then Roger who owns the dock. The smell probably alerted him.

This put me almost 30 minutes behind schedule and infused me and everything I wore with eau d’otter.

There are some things photographs can’t record. Like smell. Like just how soaked my right foot sock and shoe are from a mixture of bilge water, otter urine and salt-watered slosh with bits of otter $#@!.

I had to run along the seawall with my 22lb pack (more on this packing disaster later) in order to make the plane. I am writing this at 2000ft above the Salish Sea in a packed float plane. Even so my neighboring passengers are giving me plenty of room.