Thursday September 14, 2017

We didn't leave until just after 10:00am and it was supposed to be "winds light" and in theory good conditions. But, no one told Malaspina Straight that and so we had white caps and a following sea down to Smugglers, even thought the wind wasn't that strong. Fortunately, it wasn't far.

The entrance to Smugglers is really squeaky. It's good to keep re-reading the description that says it's 50' wide because looking at it doesn't give you warm fuzzies. EG pulled in first and said that there was only 1 sailboat in the outer bay and no one in the inner bay, so we went into the inner to find a spot. We went back into the furthest reaches and found that with the current tide it was just fine, but tomorrow leaving it would be a low tide and therefore even squeakier.

We both stern tied again, so it was a bit of an ordeal. Just a minor ordeal of course We each had some lunch and then the Giglette came and picked us up and we went to shore to do the walk. There was an interpretive trail and it was a great walk with lovely views, and a little breeze. When you got out of the breeze, it was nice and warm!



We got dropped off back on Spellbound for a quick recovery period, fed the dog, and then headed over to EG for beer on the flybridge and some appetizers, and then a lovely dinner. Several more sailboats showed up in the outer bay, but then one "home made" sailboat ventured into the inner bay with us so we did have some entertainment. Back to Spellbound in the dark.

Wednesday September 13, 2017

It was another sunny day today, but still quite cool. We had a quiet morning on the boat, catching up on email, Blog's etc. We had planned previously to have lunch with David and Jennifer, the previous owners of Fishermans Resort in Pender Harbour, at their house. So we dinghied over to Whiskey Slough and the public dock where Dave picked us all up in his truck. They had graciously said that it was no problem bringing Bella over to the house too. When we arrived at the top of the ramp, there was a small beat up van there with this logo on the front hood. Nice!

We had a fantastic lunch with Dave and Jennifer. They have a beautiful home with stunning views of Malaspina Straight. (Now we know who to call when we need a weather report!). They have had an abundance of company lately, and so apparently they have an abundance of really good cheese for entertaining! So we helped them out.



After lunch, we we made the short walk down to their local beach and just took in the ambience. It warmed up considerably and was a wonderful warm and sunny day. Afterwards, we went back to the house and toured the garden a bit and then had some dessert and did some more visiting. It was quite late by the time Dave took us back to the dock.

After such a decadent day, we decided that we really didn't want to cook and wanted something light for dinner. So we called Lavernes to make sure that they would be open. And then she surprised us by saying she was fully booked up and couldn't take anyone else! How's that? We thought it was the Squim Yacht Club who was also on the docks, but it wasn't and they had gone up there for dinner at 4:45pm. John Henry's restaurant is now closed on Tuesday's and Wednesday's, so that wasn't an option either. I guess we were feeling a bit lazy and didn't want to go to Garden Bay, so we just did a quick pasta and prawn meal on Spellbound. It was a nice warm evening and the end of a great day.

Tuesday September 12, 2017

The wind came up last night again and it was blowing a little bit in the harbor as we left at 7:00am. We wanted to leave early as the wind was supposed to come up even more later. It was pretty lumpy out there will lots and lots of whitecaps, but at least we had the wind and waves behind us so not terrible. Probably a 3.5 on the Bella meter.

We arrived in Pended Harbor around 11:15 or so, moved down to the north end of the dock, and checked in. We decided it was a "lox and bagel" day so we had lunch on Spellbound. It was sunny and warm, but still pretty breezy inside the harbour. So we ended up staying in side the boat. Greg had a migraine and so he napped for the afternoon, while I did some work on the computer. Byron and Sue went for a walk and up to Laverne's. Dinner on Spellbound and an early evening.

Monday September 11, 2017

It was mighty windy last night and continued on this morning. Greg had a pretty bad migraine still so he was not all that interested in doing too much. I took the opportunity to do some work in the morning.

Since it was so crappy and the boats were rockin', we decided that we should get off them and go back to Nancy's for lunch. It was our reward. We walked a little bit and went over to the store to rent a DVD for the evening. Greg and Byron went back to the boats and Sue and I went up to Pollen Sweaters just to "take a look". Oh, OK, I purchased too. They're nice sweaters and it's going to be a long cold winter after not having had much of a summer! My reward.

Had dinner on EG and then watched "Men in Black 3". An early evening as we were going to have an early morning.

Sunday September 10, 2017

Engines on at 9:00 and we extricated ourselves from all our ties. It was a nice ride down initially, but of course by the time we got around Sarah Point, it got windy. Not the light that was in the forecast, but, yeah, whatever. There were quite a few boats heading south and we had to squish around a bit in the Copelands, especially because there were 2 humpbacks there just hanging around and causing the boats to go here and there.

We managed to get the last 2 spots on the docks, and actually a sailboat that we passed in the Copelands had to hang out for 45 minutes to get a spot on the dock. We were on either side of 'A' dock and Spellbound had to squeeze into a spot behind Grey Malkin II who we had seen in Kwatsi Bay. They arrived *just* ahead of us.

Once settled, we decided that today was a good day for lunch at Nancy's Bakery. I think we pigged out also having cinnamon buns and coffee's too, as well as panini's. Then it was time to walk it off by going on the Lund Loop - it's a whopping 1km walk! But Bella did walk most of it. We were very surprised to see some ripe and delicious blackberries still on the side of the road. Back down the road to get to Mile 0 of Highway 101 that runs over 15,000 km down to Chilie. (There's a monument that says so). And then to the hotel to check out the Gift Shop. (Oh my, very cute seal statues and some cool "art" rocks with starfish on them). Nice Stuff.

Before we went on the walk, we decided that tonight was the night to go to the Laughing Oyster for dinner. (It was buffet night! You know us old people always enjoy a buffet!! ). So we also called for Martin in the "Big Yellow Taxi" to drive us over there.



He picked us up at 5:45 and drove us over to the Laughlin Oyster restaurant. Technically, he doesn't charge for the service because he doesn't actually have a license to drive a taxi. But he does take a donation for the local humane society, so how can you argue with that really? It's a really cool car but you can tell that the seats haven't had any new stuffing in them since 1947!

The 4 of us were absolute pigs at the buffet, everything was really good. They had chicken, pork, beef, pasta and a lovely salmon as well as lots of other stuff. You really did need to try it all! And if that wasn't bad enough, we even ordered dessert which I knew was a bad idea. But you don't see Tiramisu all that often and it was done *right* so, really, we had to have some. Martin picked us up and took us back to the marina again and we waddled back onto the boats. The wind picked up at the end of the evening, and the boats were a rocking pretty well at the dock.

Saturday September 9, 2017

Are we back in Alaska? It rained quite hard last night. And the wind was up a little bit in the bay. Not too much, just a steady 5 or 6 knots, but then it would gust up to 10 to 12 knots. Bella got us up and so Greg got up around 6:30 and thought we were a little too close to the rocks. So we loosened our stern tie and brought the anchor line it a bit to pull us away. We had tons of water underneath the stern, we were just really close to the rock wall behind, or to the side, of us.

Back to bed, but not really back to sleep. As it was still grey and pouring rain, it was a lazy morning and we had the furnace going to try and dry it out a bit. Spent the whole day on the boat and didn't even get off once. The wind died to basically nothing sometime before noon. Greg made a nice breakfast for lunch. At some point in the afternoon it stopped raining, so we moved the boat forward a bit and re-anchored and re-did the stern tie so we were further from the wall. Felt better. We invited Byron and Sue over for early beer and appetizers and then we had a nice salmon dinner. Not the kind of day we were looking for in Desolation Sound at all. The water was pretty warm, around 65F, but certainly not a sunning / swimming kind of day.

Friday September 8, 2017

(Day 100!) We were originally planning on spending 3 nights in Campbell River, and had in fact already paid for 3 nights. But looking at the forecast, this afternoon is nice, but tomorrow, the wind is up. We'd like to get across over to Desolation on a calm day, so we decided to leave here a day early. Slack is at 1:30, and the wind comes down in the afternoon, so we decided to leave at slack.

Of course we still had some things to do here. First, up to the recycling center to get rid of a boat load of recycling, and then over to Starbuck's for a coffee. For Bella. Then over to the grocery store to stock up on fresh veggies and anything else we missed. Then to the private liquor store. This place was great! The BC LCB store was out of a couple things we were looking for, and they have never had a great selection. But man this private one had a fantastic beer selection! So we picked up some big bottles and we headed back to Miss B and the boats. It started getting a bit sunnier as the day progressed.

When we got to the marina, a fellow on the dock pointed out a black beer sleeping on the breakwater. No one is quite sure how he got there, other than he "probably swam". We were able to see him from the flybridge of the boats. He lifted his head at one point, and then put it back down on the rocks for more sleeping. The theory was that he was tired from swimming.

We eventually had a bite, checked out of the marina (where they gave us a refund for the extra day and also for the WiFi), and Byron returned the rental car. We took off at 1:30 with camera's ready to take photos of the bear. Unfortunately, we couldn't get a look at him and I took some photos of a bear rock! He was gone by the time we went by

It was nice and sunny and calm heading over as you can see in the photo above. We took a peek in Galley Bay and there didn't appear to be anyone in there, so we continued on to check out Tenedos Bay. There were 4 boats in there already and we found a nice little nook in the back that we waited in. EG tried to anchor and just found rocks, so wanted to go check out another part of the Bay. That looked a little too open to the weather that was coming in, so we decided to head over to Prideax Haven. We went through there and into Melanie Cove. It had quite a few boats in there already with only a couple using a stern tie. There was a big spot in the back that we left for EG to use and just waited to make sure they got settled. Once they were done, we chose a spot to stern tie next to another sailboat that was stern tied. Unfortunately, there was a small sailboat anchored in the middle who was drifting around all over the place. At first it looked like we had enough room to be where we were, but then as he drifted around more, it looked a little tight. The couple and their dog ended up coming back in their dingy, and they thought we were too close to them. They politely declined our offer of helping them stern tie, and said that they would prefer to swing and that we should move. Fine. They *were* there ahead of us. Fortunately, as we were pulling up our anchor at dusk, another boat that was using the stern tie 2 over from us left, and so we popped around the sailboat on our starboard so that it was now on our port. We ended up anchoring and stern tying again in a bit of a hurry this time. And then headed over to EG for a late dinner. Long day, so an early evening.