Vancouver Island - Day 1

Thursday June 30, 6am. It’s early morning in Friday Harbor. Boat is loaded and ready. Yesterday we missed the 4:45 ferry by less than 3 minutes and then had to wait for the 8:25 ferry. Turned out OK. Good dinner in town and it forced us to relax a bit.




Last night the wind blew and made a racket through the rigging. It’s amazing how much noise sets up between the rigging, life lines, fenders, then the boat pulling against its lines.

After a quick run out to the Cabin, we left Friday Harbor mid morning and headed north. The wind was from the south, so we unfurled the Jib to get some assist and power sailed. Up San Juan Channel, caught the remaining ebb through Speiden Channel, then sneaked through John’s Passage and saw all the Tee Pee’s at what is now Camp Norwester at the old sheep farm on John’s Island.



We crossed the border and checked into Customs at Bedwell Harbor. We were in and out of Customs in less than 5 minutes and on our way again around South Pender Island and finally into Trincomali channel.



We had the benefit of a flood current pushing us north and between the flood and the assist from the sail, we made pretty good time, while running the engine at about 1800 rpm.



At this point it’s later in the afternoon and while we hadn’t really planned on getting all the way to Nanaimo, but it was such a lovely day we decided to press onward. Around 5pm we fired up the BBQ on the stern and grilled Jodi’s rosemary chicken while still underway. Dinner in the cockpit was great and just as we finished we approached Dodd Narrows. We missed the slack by about 2 hours, and Dodd is the only narrows I’ll challenge at times other the slack.

We worked the backeddy on the eastern side and the speed stayed up at 6 to 7 knots then swung into the main channel as it narrowed. The current was running about 3 to 4 knots against us and we slowed down to about 2 knots and we crept forward against the current. A few eddies pushed us around a bit, but we managed to get through and our speed gradually increased as the channel widened and the current diminished.

Around Jack point and there was Nanaimo. Jodi was struck by the high rises. I think she was expecting a smaller town, but Nanaimo is a bustling place. We found dock space at Newcastle Island and took a pleasant stroll on the island. Need to have more time here, to go fully around the island and in retrospect we should have unloaded the bikes to cover more ground. We saw at least 15 deer on the island, and many of them were young bucks with fresh antlers.



When we got back to the boat, there were some researchers studying the Purple Martins that inhabit the dock. Seems these birds are at the extreme Northwestern part of their habitat and there’s been quite an effort to make nesting boxes perched on pilings for the birds. There were less than 60 nesting pairs of birds in the early 80’s and that number has swelled to over 600 now, thanks to the efforts of volunteers building these nesting boxes.

We saw another inhabitant of the dock and one that would awaken us from time to time throughout the night. Raccoons patrolled the dock at night and they clambered aboard, skulking around the decks looking for food.