Pender Harbor mellow
26 April 2010 | 49 37.818'N:124 01.425'W, Pender Harbor, BC
John
25Apr10 Pender Harbor mellow (49'37.818N,124'01.425W)
The morning crossing of Georgia Strait with 15 to 20 knots from the SE put the waves either on our beam or just aft of beam. The stabilizers took most of the bounce out, but given I hadn't taken my meclyzine in the morning, I felt just a bit punky. Don't have both of my sea legs screwed on yet. So Deb took the con while I snoozed on the pilot house settee for an hour and then felt better. I'm very sensitive to motion, and until I've been back on the water for a couple of weeks, I need to take a pill whenever we're going to be moving around a bit. Kermodei shared my green gills and lay on the pilot house floor, slipping back and forth inside his skin and the boat moved around beneath us �- he's got more growing to do, so his skin is still loose. Fortunately, the rougher it is, the more he sleeps.
Pender Harbor was calm and especially lovely, given very few other cruisers are out and about yet. We anchored in empty Garden Bay and after charging the dead battery on Peter's dink (it hasn't been used since Australia) we motored over to the Garden Bay Pub with Peter, Margaret and Susie and enjoyed live music, good food and great company. It was great seeing our two boats anchored side by side, both turning and twisting in the light breeze and current in near perfect coordination. It's kind of weird to see the boats dance together, given we usually swing far differently than other boats. Despite the fact that Peter didn't have a snubber out and I had a bridle, the boats danced the same way.
I tried to run Kermodei's legs off with a Chuck-it and a couple of balls (he lost the first ball in the rocks below a dock), but he seems to have boundless energy these days. After giving up on tiring him out, we wound up tying him up outside the pub while we ate and listened to live music and watched Vancouver and LA duke it out in hockey. Several pub patrons went outside to sit with him and keep him company, so he was happy with that. Unfortunately, he ate part of the plastic bowl the chef provided with water �- typical Labrador behavior. I'll find the bits and pieces tomorrow, also unfortunately.
Kermodei has grown so fond of the dingy now that he jumps into it on any provocation and sits there, patiently waiting for a ride to shore. Once underway, he leans over the side to stick his snout under the water as we go, and nearly falling in. I figure its a matter of time before I'm going to be going back to pick him up after he does an edo. But he's got to learn, and with labs, that means the hard way. Fortunately he's a very good swimmer now. But getting him back on to the dink is going to be interesting, I suspect.
We're off in the morning for Princess Lousia. We're going to leave a bit early because I want to visit a site where I left my dad's ashes a couple of years ago. It's just a mile or so beyond the entrance to Malibu Rapids. This amazing location, that my sister Jo and I found while cruising in the dink, was covered in Indian petroglyphs, but not listed in any archive of such locations that I can find. It was clearly a special place for the local Indians, and its now very special for us.