Edi and I had hauled Sequitur and left her on the hard in Puerto Montt, and had arrived back at our loft in Vancouver the last day of June. Our thoughts were to spend the summer in Canada while winter spends its time in Chile. Our immediate goals were to warm-up and dry-out from more than three months of cold dank weather in Valdivia and northern Patagonia.
Back in Vancouver, while the rest of North America suffered through weeks of one of the hottest spells on record, we continued waiting for summer to arrive. While the news headlines from the other side of the Rockies were riddled with references to heat waves, deaths from heat and global warming, we sat in Vancouver watching the west coast weather change from rain to drizzle to rain showers to heavy overcast to a few hours of sun and then back to rain again. All the while it remained cool, bordering on cold. I tried installing summer:
INSTALLING SUMMER.....
█████████░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░ 30% DONE.
Installation failed. 404 error: Season not found.
On the 1st of July, Canada Day we walked across the Cambie Bridge to Costco to stock-up our fridge, freezer and pantry. On the way we paused above the new wastewater heat recovery plant to look across the community garden plots back toward our Vancouver home. Our century-old building is one of only half-a-dozen heritage survivors in Southeast False Creek. Across the street from us to the west is another survivor, the old Maynard's Building, which is being preserved and incorporated into a three-building development of four, nine and thirteen floors.
When we left last year, the tower site was a fifteen-metre-deep hole; we returned to see workers pouring the seventh floors. Just down the street to the east is the site of the 1100-suite, twenty-or-so-building Olympic Village, which was feverishly being finished for the 2010 Games when we left. Now it is reported to be over 70% sold and occupied. This photo, from the City of Vancouver website, shows False Creek running across from the bottom left under the Burrard Bridge, past Granville Island and under the Granville Bridge, past the False Creek Yacht Club, and on around the bend under the Cambie Bridge to Science World and the edge of Chinatown. Our loft is close to the end of the Cambie Bridge at the right of the photo, and the Olympic Village is just beyond.
Across the street from our loft are ten hectares of vacant City lands along the False Creek shores awaiting redevelopment. The entire Southeast False Creek development encompasses 32 hectares, about 80 acres in the heart of what many call the finest city in the world. Adjacent to all of this are some of the finest cruising waters on the planet. We often question why we have decided to leave all of this to go boating.
Edi and I have so far sailed Sequitur over 9500 nautical miles, and if all goes well, by the time we return her to Vancouver she will have around triple that under her keel. We are about one-third of the way into our circumnavigation, and with all the upwind sailing, bucking the current and contending with the deplorable work from Sequitur's fit-out, we hope that it was the worst third.

When we were returning from our shopping trip to Costco, we saw that the Downtown Historic Railway streetcar was running, and we decided to take it to Granville Island the next day. The streetcar in service was built in New Westminster in 1905 and was operated by the British Columbia Electric Railway until 1958, when it was retired. It has since been carefully restored and runs on weekends and holidays during the summer, operated by volunteers from the Transit Museum Society.
The line currently runs only from Granville Island to the Olympic Village SkyTrain Station a block from our loft. It had previously run to Science World; however, its tracks were removed for the construction of the Olympic Village. There are plans and proposals to restore the former line to Science World and to eventually extend it through Chinatown, Gastown and Downtown to Stanley Park. Onboard, my camera somehow reverted to sepia-toned format as I shot photos on our way to Granville Island.
On the Island, we walked through the boatyard used by Specialty Yachts, and could identify none of the boats in the rather empty yard as their projects. Their floats, for which we had previously waited for weeks to be fitted-in for work, were nearly half empty. We counted twelve vacant slips, and we thought back to our double-rafting days there. Granted it is July and everyone is supposed to be out boating, but in 2007, 2008 and 2009 as Specialty bumbled-along with our fit-out and repairs, the yard and the floats were crowded to overflowing all summer long.
A few days later, taking advantage of another spell of sunshine, we took the SkyTrain downtown and walked along through Gastown to Chinatown. We were surprised to see that almost all of the small Chinese greengrocers along Pender, Gore and Keefer had disappeared. Where there had formerly been dozens of wonderful little shops with great selections of fresh oriental greens like pak choi, gai lan and sui choy, as well as a broad selection of main-stream produce at very good prices, now the shops are almost entirely given over to medicinal herbs, dried foods, and oriental packaged goods, with virtually no fresh selection. We surmised they lost their fresh market to all the new upscale and trendy supermarkets, like Whole Foods and Urban Fare that have sprung-up as Coal Harbour, Yaletown, Gastown, Tinseltown, Chinatown and the Olympic Village have gentrified all around them.
On our walk back around the head of False Creek and through Olympic Village we had a good look across the Creek at the progress on re-roofing BC Place Stadium. Gone is the old marshmallow-in-bondage roof, and nearly completed is the new standing-rib-roast roof. The old roof was air-supported through a system of huge pumps and access to the building was through air-locks. The new roof will be fully retractable and the spaces formerly occupied by air pumps and air locks will be liberated.
The winter-like weather soon returned, and with it our food cravings were also winter-like. In the evenings we enjoyed such dinners as beef tenderloin with bearnaise sauce served with steamed baby potatoes in a crimini, shallot and garlic cream sauce and a side of asparagus with mayonnaise and splendidly accompanied by a 2006 Burrowing Owl Syrah.
After a week or so of self-imposed quarantine to rid ourselves of any travel bugs we might have picked-up on our five-day commute from Puerto Montt, we walked over to visit with Bram, Amy and Annelies. The granddaughter is now nine months old, full of spirit, crawling and starting to stand. It is time for Bram and Amy to start moving things higher up on the shelves and elsewhere.
Amy is enjoying her twelve months maternity leave and Bram had last year quit his job and began working from home. He is a software engineer and had worked as a games developer for a large Vancouver company before deciding to head out on his own; a bit scary with a new baby, but it comes with the marvellous benefit of fully participating in Annelies' early development.
Bram has been writing applications for the Apple iPad, iPod and iPhone platforms, and one of these, a game called "The Little Crane That Could" had over a million downloads in one month, and it was for a while the top downloaded game in Britain. He is, needless to say, delighted with the response.
I downloaded the app to my iPad and played with it for a while, and it proved to be rather challenging. It employs a realistic physics simulation and offers full control over the crane, allowing you to rotate, elevate, bend, extend and grapple. The tasks and challenges that Bram has created are certainly not easy, and it is by no means a casual game. By the time I had worked my way through the tasks in the free level I was addicted, so like thousands of others, I anted-up my $3.99 for the premium version. From the feedback I saw on one discussion board, Bram has captivated a huge following. The free version is at:
http://www.itunes.com/app/thelittlecranethatcould
We were invited to dinner by Rob and Debrah, of Avanti who are followers and frequent commenters on our blog. The sun had made another of its rare appearances, so we were able to sit outside on their deck and enjoy the evening as Rob barbecued some deliciously marinaded steak and we devoured it with the salads Debrah had created. We had a delightful evening filling-in details of our and their past year's experiences.
And then it rained and drizzled for much of the following week. From five days out, the weather forecast looked bleak for the scheduled Vancouver Power and Sail Squadron raft-up in False Creek, but as the appointed Monday approached, there was growing promise of some sunny periods. We organized with Lois, the Cruise Master to catch a ride with her in Wanderlust out to the raft-up. Also joining us for the ride out were Barbara and Debrah; Rob was tied-up in meetings and we learned he might join us later, if he could shake himself free.
By the time we had motored to the end of the Creek and secured alongside Don and Susan's Simbuyo, the skies had mostly cleared. Debrah got a call from Rob on her cell, and arranged to pick him up at the ferry float at Science World. I helped Don lower his dinghy, and off rowed Debrah into a beautiful view of the head of False Creek. We are so blessed to have such a wonderful waterway in the heart of the city, and even better, to have nearly all of Vancouver's dozens of kilometres of shoreline dedicated to a public walkways, cycle paths and parks.
We spent a delightful evening onboard Simbuyo with two tables and a ledge covered in a mosaic of potluck platters, dishes and bowls. The spread once again demonstrated that boaters usually each bring food for three or more to a potluck. We shared lively conversation and delicious food, all of us trying our best to ease the load on the groaning tables. The evening flew by and the darkness and lateness caught us by surprise. We bade farewell to Don and Susan and Lois tip-toed Wanderlust back out the Creek and found her slip in the dark. It was certainly more relaxed and civilized boating than we had experienced the past year.
Nearly a month after we hauled Sequitur in Puerto Montt and headed back to Vancouver, we are still in awe of having a constant and reliable supply of electricity, water, heat and cooking gas, of having a superb selection of shopping within a short walk, of not stumbling into holes in the sidewalks, of having clean, modern public transit and of not having to struggle to communicate. With all the creature comforts we have here, we are not yet at the stage of yearning to head back to Patagonia, but we are sure that will come.