Late Summer Cruise
01 September 2017 | Nanaimo
Jay/Warm
Sunset at Cabbage Island
With Karina all fixed up and ready to travel, we finally set off on a 2 week cruise to Vancouver and the Gulf Islands.
We had a pleasant sail to Vancouver from Nanaimo. It started off in 15 knots of wind from the NW. Eventually, by the bell buoy, the wind left us and we hanked on the "iron jib" and motored the rest of the way into False Creek. We found a pretty good spot to anchor and we stayed in Vancouver for a music reading workshop and visiting our friends Jim and Linda. One morning, after a particularly windy night, our neighbour had drifted uncomfortably close to us. We took that as a sign that it was time to head for other anchorages. As the wind was from the NW again, we headed down to Tumbo Island.
Tumbo has to be one of the prettiest anchorages in the whole of the Gulf Islands. Unfortunately, it has a scary reputation for being rough in NW winds. The good news for us was the winds were forecast to be light from the SE. We stayed there 2 nights. We walked Cabbage Island 2x and Tumbo once. Tumbo is by far the larger of the two with a pleasant trail system to walk. There are two places to land on Tumbo. One is a steep dinghy tie up and you scramble up a rock to the trail. The other is a rather muddy beach. We put the wheels on the dinghy and rolled it up the muddy beach where we started our walk.
On the next day, we decided to start the long journey towards home. We stayed the next 2 nights at Bedwell Harbour tied to a mooring can. We enjoyed some of the resort facilities and walked to Gowland Point (see pics from earlier posts).
We left Bedwell in the mid afternoon and headed for Ganges where we visited Heinz and Lisa.The served us a delicious supper and desert. We left the next day for Montague Harbour where we walked the lovely little peninsula in the park.
The next day, we made it to Princess Cove where we stayed one night and then sailed and motored home. We had 0 mechanical issues and 100% good times. Within 15 minutes of getting home, it started to rain. Was that good timing or good planning?