Back to Vancouver

Hi Everyone!

After we left Oleo's last Saturday Aug 27th, we headed back through the Dent and Yaculta rapids in a downpour. Yes, more rain.

The rapids themselves were totally uneventful. The trick is to go through around slack current according to the Canadian Tide and Current tables. There was a fair amount of other boat traffic, but everyone was well behaved.

We then anchored back in Squirrel Cove and had 1 day of good weather. On Monday, Travis and Barbara joined us on Bar-T-Na and we had a lovely evening playing Mexican Train dominoes.

Finally on Wednesday, the 31st, after daily rain - we both had enough. Time to head South. We were originally intending to visit a few more anchorages in the Desolation Sound region, but we were both going wonky from the all the crummy weather.

Out next stop on August 31st and Sept 1st was Garden Bay in Pender Harbour. Pender is an interesting place with at least half a dozen marinas with pubs, restaurants and small stores. There is even a small shopping center across the bay. We hiked up to a local lake and generally walked around a bit. The local mosquitos were active but they've changed their taste. For some reason Bill is the preferred taste treat instead of Mary.

On Friday Sept 2nd we continued on down the coast to Gibsons Landing in Howe Sound. How is just up the coast a little from Vancouver. Gibsons is at the far side of Howe Sound, so although it's on the mainland, there's no connection by road across the sound, only ferries. Still it's a fair sized community with lots of little shops and a small shopping center. The marina was full for the weekend with boaters on holiday from Vancouver. This is labor day (actually it's labour day) weekend up here in Canada too! The best things in Gibson's were Mike's place for great gelato and the latest DVDs (we rented two over the two days we were in town) and the Bayview Szechuan Chinese Restaurant.

This morning, Sunday the 4th, we headed down back to Vancouver and tied up at the False Creek Yacht Club across from Granville Island in Vancouver. We'll be here for about a week. Vancouver was one of our favorite places on our journey up and we're looking forward to spending more time in this lovely city.

It's also our 7th Anniversary! So we're looking forward to a nice dinner tonight to celebrate.

After we pulled in, Sam and Nadia Calmes from the Jeanneau 37 "Avanti" stopped by. They've been here in False Creek for about a week. They were with us on the Baja Haha and had been cruising in Mexico and Central America. They came up a few weeks ago on the same Dockwise Yacht Transport voyage as our friends on Barbara and Craig on Capella and Mona and Roger on Cherokee Eagle. Sam and Nadia will be heading up to Desolation Sound for a bit of a cruise before heading back to Seattle for the Winter and to sell the boat as Nadia is expecting twins ;-} We'll visit with them later today and share our favorite spots with them. We hope they have better weather than we did.

We're currently planning to be here in Vancouver for a week, then head over to the Gulf Islands for a few weeks. More later as our plans firm up.

We're going to cut our Canada trip a little shorter than we originally planned as we're tired of the lousy weather. More on our anticipated schedule as our plans firm up.

We're back in civilization, so our cell phones and regular email addresses work again!

Warmest Regards,
Bill and Mary