Reflections of 5 Months to Alaska

Our "Adventure of a Lifetime" has come to a momentary pause. We have been fortunate that the weather has been relatively good, the people we have met have been extremely friendly and our family and friends have been so supportive of our travels.

Dave & Penny and Wayne & Cathy have been the best travelling companions and hopefully they will lead future expeditions of Alaska Bound boats! To you, we thank for the extra 10 lbs. of travel belly! The meals were marvelous, the wine and card playing something we looked forward to everyday, dinner conversations were always stimulating and the comfort of knowing that in any emergency, you had our backs covered! Had it not been for your companionship and willingness to "push the envelope" in where we travelled to and how we did it, the accounting of our trip would not have been nearly as interesting!

Thank you to everyone for their encouragements and well wishes. I will be continuing to update the blog with charts, video, waypoints, photographs and other information to the places we have visited. The aim is to take this blog framework, add more text, photographs and history and then to go to print! Check back in a few weeks and you will see some more interesting things on our blog!

September 7 - 14 - Iron Bay - Indian Arm

After washing the boat, setting up our new spot and getting caught up with a few chores, we untie the lines early Sunday morning to meet up with everyone up Indian Arm at our outstations "Clementine" and "Iron Bay". We meet up with Dave and Wayne at Clementine where the end of a great "Family Weekend" function is coming to a close and after lunch, we untie and putter over to "Iron Bay". I jokingly say to Dave, I have nothing to photograph, there are no "great" wildlife shots to look for.

We will rusticate the week away at Iron Bay, getting aclimatized to our new old lives and wrestling with the fact that we will be going out to get real jobs and try to get back into our old routines. We have missed our families and friends but have not missed the city and her trappings.

September 6 - Homeward Bound to Vancouver

A slight breeze in the morning and a listen to the VHF radio weather, prompts us to pull anchor and head for Vancouver. The crossing is a mere 25 miles, but can be brutal if the winds are on the beam. We arrive late morning in our new spot at Burrard Yacht Club with mixed emotions. It is good to be home, but I liken it to taking daddies grand old cadillac around the block for a sunday drive and finding out you really are a participant in the Indy 500. There are boats everywhere in the harbour, freighters, cruise ships, fisherman, work boats and cruisers. Paying attention to whats in front of your bow reverts back to other boaters and harbour traffic instead of Dolphins and whales, debris in the water is more than we have seen the whole trip!
We are happy to be able to see friends and family and to have a new berth for Shaman at BYC, but we are already missing the bays, inlets and wildlife we have been witness to and enjoyed for the last 5 months. Reality Bites, really it does!

Septemer - 5th - Silva Bay to Pirates Cove

One of our favorite anchorages in the Gulf Islands with the history of "Brother X11" to be found here. If you are looking for solitude, don't come here! There are a lot of changes since we last stayed here, with the Locals on Decourcy Island building their own private docks to the edge of the Marine Park. There is a floating dock in the middle with Maple Bay being the Host Boat. We assume it is to answer any questions boaters might have about the area.
We are joined by Bean and Scott and Carson & Mag on our first night stay as this is a good jump off point to head back to Vancouver for them. At 6:45 am they pull out and are back in Vancouver in just over 2 hours.
We opt to stay another night to work on odd jobs on the boat and do some more gunkholing in the area.

September 2 - 4th Silva Bay Gabriola

Our first time stay in Silva Bay waslots of fun. Gabriola Island has alot to offer all boaters. The meals in the pub/restaurant are good, fair priced, but could use a little bit of imagination for daily specials. The dock at Silva Bay that BYC has rented is a bit hard to find as there is a "D" dock at Pages Marina and a "D" dock at Silva Bay Marina. In short order we were all tied up and headed up for dinner at the pub.

There are moped rentals, good food store, golfing, kayak rentals and all sorts of fun pasttimes to while away the days. We chose Golfing and had a great time hacking our way around the Gabriola course. Gunkholing in and around Gabriola has a lot to offer with little bays and channels everywhere. For some excitement, take our dinghy through Gabriola Pass at full flood! A good stay can be found at Gabriola.

September 1 - Friends Bay to Schooner Cove

A 3' beam sea most of the way from Lasquiti to Vancouver Island. The sun is shining and we are having a nice crossing from the middle islands to Vancouver Island. we are eagerly anticipating swimming in the pool and having a soak in the hot tub at Schooner. Both of our clubs have reciprocal moorage agreements with Schooner Cove Yacht Club, but we find that only one spot is available. What a disappointment to find that all the buildings are closed and will soon be demolished, no pool, no hot tub. A tricky entrance awaits anyone wanting to stay in Schooner Cove, so go when seas are a bit calm and preferably at a high tide.
A nice stay, but not one we would not do again.

August 31 - September 2 - Jedidiah Island

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.

Aug 29 & Aug 30 - Pender Harbour

We arrive at Pender Harbour and spend a couple of nights cleaning up and getting ready to meet family for the Labour Day Weekend. We are pleasantly surprised that our "Outstation" at Pender is under new owners. Some of the rules are changing and they are now Dog friendly. Time will tell whether the new owners are a good thing for the club.
Bean and Scott meet us on Friday night and we anxiously await the arrival of our "Grand Boat." Gulf Island and CJ in his new boat are stuck in Vancouver waiting out weather and we will see them tommorrow.

Definition of Grand Boat - when you son does not give you grand babies, but buys a boat instead!

Aug 28 - Grace Harbour to VanAnda

The weather is lightening up somewhat today, with brisk winds from the Southeast. In this part of the coast, this means more rain! We depart Grace Harbour and will come back here some day when its hot and sunny. A stop for a few hours in Powell River, Lunch with my sister and a quick shop to restock Food & Booze. The public marina is full to extreme, with every slip rafted 4 deep. People think we are crazy to be leaving the safety of Powell River Harbour to go to who knows where!
As we head the 4 1/2 miles across from Powell River to Vananda Texada, it starts to get a bit exciting. The seas are at least 7-8 feet on our beam, not to bad, but Mike decides to "Tack" a bit as we will never make it into the opening of the marina. Dave & Penny have "reserved" a spot on the dock for us and are watching us from the breakwater. According to them, there were times that the waves were so high, it covered our boat up completely with ocean spray. I can attest to that as I was sitting on the bridge, listening to things in the main salon crashing and banging around, but was not leaving my chair to go see. Not to mention that the dog had his talons dug right into my feet, so in effect, my feet were nailed to the floor. At one point, the waves were so high, that they were spraying through all the zippers and it was like we were being sprayed by a fire hose. Mike and I looked at each other like drowned rats and had a bit of a laughing fit. We safely make it into the marina, and it takes about an hour to dry everything out (including all of our electronics on the bridge), de-salt all the windows and canvas (so we can see out again)and we join the group on the dock to watch the storm from the safety of our moorage. Vananada is a good place to hide out from bad seas. Not many people know that this little marina exists, but mark it in your books for a safety haven in bad seas.
We had jokenly said that after 5 months, we were due to get the crapped kicked out of us and sure enough, Malaspina Strait did not disappoint!