Greetings from Ganges, on Salt Spring Island!
We will be keeping this blog as we journey to, we hope, the Mid-Coast of British Columbia, with plans to return to our Bellingham home port at the end of September.
Our plans to leave as a small flotilla with our SYC boats Glider and Take Five for points north didn’t materialize as planned. We were plagued with small and large engine, battery and alternator issues since Memorial Weekend. This is why they call it a sail “plan”, not a sail “actual”. But we are underway, nonetheless! And we have determined to spend a couple more days on the way to Nanaimo to make this part of our journey north our “shakedown” cruise. We will hope to see our Squalicum YC friends in Desolation Sound in about a week, before continuing North on our own.
Our first night, Wednesday the 15th, was to be at Sucia, then the next day Bedwell to clear customs, then NORTH! But as we were leaving Bellingham Bay Raleigh checked the engine and found – diesel fuel where it did not belong, OUTSIDE the fuel line. A diversion to Inati Bay on Lummi was the change in the “plan” for Day 1. Complete repairs were made, a lovely afternoon was spent in the late spring sun communing with our boat, and a toast was made to our upcoming journey.
Day two began early, and as we passed Sucia at around 10, we looked at the water and kept going. I encourage everyone to not just dock and go at Bedwell, but to stay over. The Marine Provincial park is lovely, the signs of old shell middens are everywhere on the beach, and I love the name of the bay, Egeria Bay (ee-JEER-y-a). If you take the dingy to the head of the bay, to Medicine Beach, you can beach the dingy and take a short walk up the road to a little community store.
Friday the weather was still favorable, but we changed plans a bit to head to Ganges in the morning. This is the largest town in the Gulf Islands and is truly a water oriented community. We docked at the community dock below the Coast Guard station and at the end was the float plane station, which promised us great people and activity viewing. I am still a little rusty getting the blog back together so will post pictures soon of the many vessels we saw in this harbor.
A very instructive event happened in the evening: I was watching the sun set, and saw 5 Coast Guardsmen coming down the dock. I prepared to pay attention because something interesting was about to happen. Then they came up to ME! Are you Salish Mist out of Bellingham? Yes. We are holding traffic for you. You have been reported overdue. Well, Sir, I said, we docked at noon and have not had the radio on since. I see. Well when we heard the report, we looked out the window and saw your boat, so we thought we should check because it was certainly a coincidence to have another boat named Salish Mist docked in front of the Coast Guard Station. (You can’t make this up!) Since the Canadian Coast Guard have to file their reports as well, they used me as a training exercise and what I learned was that we are in pretty good shape as far as planning and prep. I share their followup questions with you for your own consideration. After some identification questions (names, ownership, hailing port, etc), they asked if we knew the caller (to prevent hoax); then asked if we had a sail plan (we did); and who had it (our daughter); and what kind of instructions did she have (that we would likely be in touch approximately every 10 days by either text or email – that email is more frequent up north than cell service). And did she have instructions on what to do if we were over due (Yes, she has two friends to call who are boaters and know the area we will be in to get advice before calling the Coast Guard Radio); does she know what to report (Yes, we wrote it all out: Salish Mist, a 34 sailing vessel, sloop rigged, white with blue trim and canvas, Rolland and Leora Province, owners aboard, and that she wishes to leave a message to have them call home as soon as possible, family is worried they are overdue). We were complimented on our approach, and asked what our plan was for the next several days. Montague Harbor Saturday night; Sunday to Nanaimo, and Monday in Nanaimo, and Tuesday or after, crossing to Pender Harbor, depending on the weather. Very good, I was told, we will contact the caller and let them know.
Once that was all over, I took a deep breath, blew out the adrenalin surge that arrived when the men approached the boat, and said a little thanks that we are blessed with friends who care about us so much. And went off to bed, thinking about “plans”.