From Pender Harbour we made our way to Nanaimo anchoring out in Mark Bay offshore from a beautiful Provincial Park. We spent two nights here, eventually reconnecting with our friends on the Contagious. We were mooching around the docks at the marina and low and behold, there was Contagious, all battened down and locked up. We worried a bit that they had encountered trouble; their engine had been a little fickle. We called and they reminded us that their plan was to take a week for surfing on the outer coast and that they were headed back to Nanaimo as we spoke.

Hang on, it is such a nice morning, I'm going to take a baileys and espresso break. That's better.

It is really lovely today. We are now in the San Juan Islands. The forecast today, September 11 is for 82 F. Not a cloud in the sky. The only concern is the ferry traffic. Our destination this morning is a short hop to Lopez Island, a place called Spenser Spit Marine Park. We are hoping to get on one of the mooring buoys and spend the day climbing around on the shore and maybe do a little paddling.

So back to yesterday. As my son Adam counseled me, "even if you get a two foot bigger boat, you're still gonna grow sick of each other, maybe you'll postpone it by a week or so." We could have been an episode of that reality show Kate and what's his name. Snarking back and forth. It took me some time, but I realized we have been in each others' company - uninterrupted for four frickin' months. 2200 miles. And to top it off, the door to the head has got an issue and is inoperable until we hit a dock store so one cannot even get any privacy there, if you know what I mean. So here we are, Rob barking orders, me second guessing his orders, you know the drill. Of course resetting the anchor three times in an hour doesn't help matters. So we decide to put the sour stuff in Al Gore's lockbox and skiff to Friday Harbor. That was fun. We walked off some tension and then I brilliantly devised the perfect way to change the mood-I tossed my spectacles in the drink as I was unt ying the dinghy. Cunning, huh? And no, Terry I wasn't even wearing them. They were in my almost completely zipped backpack and slithered out as I bent over to get at the knot. Well, TA-DA, we have an underwater remote camera, thanks to aforementioned Adam. We retrieved that and a treble hook we use to grapple the shrimp pots and zoomed back to the dinghy dock. Pretty soon we had a crowd. And then one fellow stepped forward and he and Rob spent an hour on their knees, sighting and then losing the glasses in about 8 feet of kelp. I offered to don my mask and fins and dive into the nasty, but by then we has lost our light, the tide was high and my glasses were gone. Oh well, they were the spare pai, resurrected from my ski-pack glasses that had been broken before.

Lest I forget, between Nanaimo and Friday Harbor we spent a great evening in Ganges, a community of art galleries, restaurants and coffee houses. And a family of swans. Milo was totally nonplussed. The father swan however made some really cool hissing sounds.

We have decided to continue the marriage and the journey. And spend two nights in the big city, at Bell Harbor working off a little steam, doing some shopping, maybe a movie. What movies have you guys seen?