Nanaimo has a very busy harbor. We are anchored at the north end of the harbor and have a perfect view of all the traffic coming and going. Fortunately, we are spared any wake from the ferry that travels between here and Vancouver as it docks in Departure Bay to the north of us. But there are three other ferries in operation from the Nanaimo waterfront...one large ferry that takes passengers to Galiano Island and two smaller harbor ferries, water taxis really, that deliver passengers to and from Protection Island and Newcastle Island. In addition to the ferries, there are many seaplanes in operation throughout the day. Starting at 7 am, no less than 6 flights take off within an hour for the mainland, signaling the start of the morning commute, island style. The flights are less frequent during the day but get busy again as the afternoon commute commences. Nanaimo also has a deep seaport, and we have seen several large vessels come and go over the last few days. And of course there is plenty of pleasure boat traffic to and from the Port of Nanaimo Marina and the 4 other smaller private marinas in the area. We are currently sharing the anchorage with about 20 other boats, both American and Canadian.

In our recent shore excursions, we have done some grocery shopping, visited the library to use the internet, and stuck our noses into several shops near the waterfront and the downtown area. It's hard not to notice how expensive it is for goods and services here, not just by Mexican standards that we have been used to over the past 6 months but by American standards as well. To get a slip for transient moorage, you'll pay $1.25 per foot per day plus an additional $10 for shore power. Fuel is $1.34 per liter...that translates to $5.07 per gallon! Groceries are very expensive, comparative to what we pay when we visit Hawaii. It must be the island location!

Yesterday, we pulled up the anchor and motored about a mile away to a dock of one of the small boatyards located here. I had made arrangements for some help in installing an external regulator for the alternator on the diesel engine. In a falling tide, we made our way along side the dock to find only a foot of water under our keel. With the tide falling, we would be aground in no time and obviously could not stay there. The yard manager, whom I spoken to on the phone, was on hand and apologized for not realizing that we were a sailboat and obviously had a deeper draft keel than the power boats that he was used to working on. He sent us on to the yard next to him and called them to let us know we were coming. But as we pulled closer in to the dock at the next yard, it was very apparent that there was not going to be any deeper water here as well and we turned around and pulled up to the small fuel dock to regroup. While at the fuel dock, we took the opportunity to top off our tank and the attendant was fine with us hanging out on the dock while we made some phone calls to some other repair guys. To wrap up this story, we found nobody to help us...all were busy, sick, on vacation or some other reason, and we left the fuel dock and proceeded back to the anchorage and dropped the anchor. We'll try again to find someone when we reach Pender Harbor next week.

We finished the day by taking a nice 6 kilometer walk (about 3 miles) throughout Newcastle Island. There's a lot of history on this island...they quarried sandstone blocks here over a hundred years ago, for such buildings as the San Francisco Mint. They also drilled out these very large wheels of rock for pulp stones that were used in grinding wood fiber into pulp for paper. Several of these are still there to see and are about 4 feet in diameter and stand about 3 feet high. While hiking, we met a couple off of a Pacific Seacraft 37 called Talos IV who were out of Seattle and heading north like us. They were planning to leave in the morning for Vancouver and we know that we will likely cross paths with them at a later date. The day ended with some relaxing reading in the cockpit under some rare afternoon sunshine!