August 30: We left Lasqueti Island in the morning and headed Teal across the Strait of Georgia for a very smooth and fast passage to Nanaimo. It’s always great to reach Nanaimo. The weather is considered the best in British Columbia and Nanaimo means that we’re almost in the US.
It’s a pretty easy place to provision from (the Thrifty grocery store lets you take the cart to the dock, some stores in Canada have one Looney ($1) deposit carts), there is a full service chandlery near by (for buying prawn and crab traps, etc.) and the used bookstore offers the internet - $1.00 for the whole day. We even had a little free wireless on the boat, but it was very erratic, so we ended up at the library ($1 for half hour, as the bookstore doesn’t open on Saturday, drat!). We got the blog posted, took on water, hit the showers to the tune of 1 Looney ($1) for 3 minutes and no control over water pressure or temperature… not our favorite “showering hole.”
Barbra Streisand occationaly calls Nanaimo home. She occupies the top floor of the towers during her stays here. If you check out the balcony in this photo, we thought we saw her sunbathing up there.
We joined the procession motoring through Dodd Narrows. Boats gather at the head of the rapid and march thru in parade fashion when the waters go slack.
It was a wonderfully sunny passage through Trincomali Channel. As we headed into our anchorage in Montague, we dropped the crab trap with all the leftover bait we had been saving up in the freezer. We had to really cram it to get it all in.
As evening came, we were entertained by the cooking that was happening in the bay. There must have been 200 boats anchored there and the smoke coming from those BBQs looked like fog setting in. The first one I spotted, I thought was a boat afire like at Bellingham on the 4th. We think they must use a lot of marinade….or something. Maybe the bigger the smoke the better the chef?
We awoke early and headed out…. Very anxious to check our crab trap and see what would manifest from that large feast we had left for the critters. Were we surprised to find NO crabs, NO bait, and NO band on the bait cage….mighty suspicious. Could a night raider have stolen our catch? One never knows. Crabbing and prawning are done on the honor system. Your trap is set out with your name on the float. No one takes another trapper’s catch, but sometimes it makes you pause to wonder….especially since we had a similar experience with our final try last year.
We headed across Boundry Pass and into San Juan Channel to Friday Harbor. We were looking forward to meeting up with the folks we had met there last year, Pamela and Bill. We received email from Pam a few days ago telling us they had purchased a 25’ Coronado and had questions for George about upgrading and enhancing the derelict treasure.
The first matter of business was checking in through Customs. One never knows how that will go. This time at Friday Harbor, they were conducting Customs checks via phone on the dock. Though the Customs office is at the marina, there was no one in the Customs shack on the docks, hence the phone interview. It seemed they were particularly inquisitive this day as the two guys ahead of us were on the line a long time answering question after question. When it was our turn, other than identification, they only wanted to know how much booze we had on board and if we had any Canadian beef or lamb. That was it and we were good to go.
We had a nice visit with Bill and Pam over coffee. They sold the boat they were living on last year and are now land livers or is it land lubbers. They're doing well and are looking forward to a beautifully restored Coronado 25. Bill really gets enthused when he looks at Teal as he’s been building and working on boats all his life.
We had great showers at Friday Harbour but are a little suspicious about how the timers work. You get a minute per quarter, which beats a minute per dollar (as is the case when visiting our “neighbors to the north”), but when the timer says 3, you actually have only one minute to rinse and finish up. We were both amazed at how fast that number went from 3 to 0.
The next day we left just before noon, went through all the tide rips and power boat wakes through the San Juan’s and took a slightly different route to Bellingham than we usually take, just for a change of scenery. We will be here for four or five days taking care of business and putting Teal up for the winter before we head for home.
We hope you have enjoyed reading about our adventures. We look forward to cruising further north next year – Alaska here we come!
Fairwinds,
George and JoAnne
© 2006 George Benson. Reproduction of any of the material on this log without written permission from George Benson is prohibited.
