Canada

We’ve never been to Sidney, a town that is about 20 miles north of Victoria. It might have been a possibility last summer when we needed to come and fetch Island Girl, because this is the town where the Washington State Ferry from Anacortes comes. Or used to. Since Covid, that route has been canceled, so we took a ferry from Port Angeles to Victoria. Anyway – we’ve never been to Sidney, and when I was looking at places to visit, Kenny suggested it. I looked at some info, and it looked like a neat place, so we added it to the itinerary for two nights. That was our destination today. We left Ladysmith around 10:00 so that we’d get to Sidney after 1:00. There was a little bit of breeze, but the water was pretty calm as we left.

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It was a VEEERRYY early get-up to leave Campbell River this morning. We had over 80 miles to go today, which translates into over 10 hours of travel. I was up at 6:15 to do all of my pre-departure things like make coffee, put things away, set up our route on Gladys, dry off the windows on the fly bridge, dry the hand rails outside so that I wouldn’t be grabbing wet rails while walking around the boat, and various other assorted swab details. We were pulling our power cord and lines by 6:45 an on our way.

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Sunday’s weather started out OK! We had a pretty nice ride to Campbell River which was about 25 miles. But look what is coming on Monday! YIKES! As one guy on the dock at Refuge Cove said, when PredictWind is a pretty rainbow of colors, stay in port. So glad we’re getting across that BEFORE Monday!!

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On Thursday evening I was finally able to get a weather app to do something! All the time we’ve been in Melanie Cove, we’ve had very little data accessability on our phones. Anyway, I was finally able to get an idea of the forecast for the next few days. The temperatures didn’t look bad, not much precipitation until Monday, and the wind might pick up a bit on Saturday. This forecast was for Refuge Cove, which is the nearest weather station. Generally it seems that the nooks and crannies don’t get as much wind as the general forecast, but the arms and reaches get more.
Well – it looked alright for what we had planned, so Friday morning we headed out for Walsh Cove. It would be a pretty ride today out through the mountains.

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Wednesday morning was a beautiful and warm start to a toasty day. There were several boats in our anchorage, and one by one they started to leave to go to their next destinations. We pulled anchor around 10:00, I think. We were only going about 13 miles, so just about an hour and a half to get to our next anchoring spot. We wanted to give people a chance to leave before we go in, but that’s always a gamble. There doesn’t seem to be a time when people come or go… transitions go on all day long.

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It was easy getting out of Lund- just untie and go. No ropes to bring in, no anchor to mess with, no power to unplug. It was a fast getaway like Bonnie & Clyde. There were some summer clouds in the sky, and the day was looking nice. Just a little breeze on the water and coffee in hand. We went up a channel that looked really narrow on the charts, but not so bad in person.

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I’m pretty sure Lund isn’t even big enough to be a town, but that is where we were headed today. We kind of sat around for awhile as we watched all the boats that spent the weekend on the dock with us go to the fuel dock. They all had our same idea. We finally meandered over there and took on our 390 litres of diesel, and then tootled our way out of the marina. It was a little bit lumpy outside, but not terrible. This is where the ferry comes in – just outside the breakwater.

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It was just a couple of hours tootle up the coast to Powell River, and my main goal was to get there around 11:00-ish to try to get a spot in the marina. They are a ‘first-come-first-served’ kind of joint, and they will raft you to another boat if necessary. It is Saturday, so we want to get there about the time that the Friday night people are leaving.
In the meantime, I really enjoyed our very calm morning in Ballet Bay. The little sailboat that was anchored in the middle was already gone, and the pond was like glass.

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Slack tide at Malibu Rapids was predicted to be at 10:47 this morning. Our plan was to get to the rapids about an hour early and if it was not running too swift, we’d transit through. Tide would be going out prior to slack, so we’d be going with the current if we were early.
Good-bye beautiful place! It’s about a 45 minute voyage to the rapids from the dock, because the whole inlet is a “No Wash” zone (that’s Canadian for “No Wake”, eh?). Several other boats had our same idea, because there were eight boats that left from the dock, mooring balls, and anchor at about 9:30 in a spread-out parade to the rapids.

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On Wednesday morning we headed out at about 10:15 for our long 52 mile day. It seems weird to start so late for a long voyage, but it all had to so with the timing of slack tide at Malibu Rapids, which is 47 miles away. Even at this, we were leaving a bit early, just to give ourselves some room for adjustments. Slack tide was estimated to be at 4:40pm, so we were shooting at going through the rapids at 4:30. Fortunately, tide would be going in, so if we were early, we’d be going with the tide. If we were late, we’d be going against it, but the low tide this evening was only about a four foot change, so the water wouldn’t be flowing super fast against us even if we were late.
Good-bye cute John Henry’s! Maybe we’ll be back, since we don’t know where we’re going after Princess Louisa.

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