Day One - Traveling to Montague we saw a fleet of boats ahead and all heading toward us. We could see them a mile or so away, it was unusual as the waterway was not that busy. Suddenly we had Orcas on all sides of us, swimming south as we headed north. The flotilla of traffic were all whale watchers, following what we later learned is a resident pod of Orcas named "J-pod", one of the Orcas is supposedly about 100 years old, named Granny. There was also a mom and babe that breeched and went down right beside the boat. It was quite exciting and even a little scary to be surrounded by Orcas. We can see why people love the San Juan and Gulf Islands, the scenery and wildlife is absolutely stunning. So far we have only been motoring. Even though the winds were blowing in our direction they were light winds and we could motor two knots faster than we could sail. The day was sunny and beautiful and we wanted to keep going, but the evening high wind and gale warnings of the area ahead of us caused us to duck into Montague Marine Park and Boat Harbor. The Marine Park was a beautiful park and had mooring balls, but due to the weather warnings for that evening and night we decided go to the Marina and pay for a dock. The winds never did build to near gale, but better safe than sorry, especially for us newbies.

Day two - the Plan for Sunday was to do a little scripture study then just take it easy and move a little closer to a place called Dodd Narrows (DN). DN can only be passed during slack tide that is when the tide turns from one direction to the other. For non-boaters think of it as tossing a ball strait up in a perfect line. The ball must stop for an instant to change direction from up to down. DN is a bottleneck between to large bodies of water. As the tide is going either in or out it all has to go through the DN bottleneck. The currents while the tide is flowing can reach 14 knots and our boat can only reach 6.8 knots (hull speed), with the engine wide open, we cruise at about 5.5 knots. The safe window to pass through DN lasts about 20 minutes as the tide turns (changes direction). Our intention was to Anchor for the night about an hour South of DN then head North through DN the next day at the second tide change when the flow would be with us. This meant we would be hanging out at anchor pretty much all day Monday until the proper tide direction changed at 4:30 pm. But as we approached Herring Bay, our target Anchorage, we could see a group of boats ahead at DN waiting to go. So after checking the tide tables we realized we could make it to DN 30 minutes past the tide turning and the current would be flowing with us. There were also numerous boats around us all heading full steam for the narrows. Leave it to "group think" to make up our mind but we mashed the throttle and headed in. We started through 35 minutes passed the tide turn, and the tide was already moving quickly, but along with us. Just as we got into the narrows we had to back off the throttle (something that may cause us to loose steerage to the faster current) because a 50-foot fishing trawler was coming through the other direction. He was fighting the current - and I have never seen such a big bow wave being pushed up from a 50-foot fishing boat. He was struggling. As we exited the Narrows two big back-eddies were on each side of the boat and I was glad I had Alaska riverboat experience, knowing were to keep my boat centered in the "V", with all the throttle that I had. We breathed a big sigh of relief once we reached the wide channel again. Nanaimo was now in sight and just one hour ahead, the perfect safe-haven for the night. In the picture you can just see the Fishing boat coming toward us in the Narrows.