With our newly repaired muffler, we left Roche Harbor for Bedwell Harbor, South Pender Island, around 10:30 and since the conditions were pretty calm, we took it nice and easy cruising along Stuart Island at 10 knots. As we were about half way across Boundary Passage (the area of water between the US and Canada, the winds began picking up and made the rest of the trip to South Pender Island a bit bumpy.
We pulled into Bedwell Harbor around 12:30, and between the amount of boat traffic and the wind pushing hard from the north at around 20 knots, getting to the Canadian Customs dock and then tying up was quite a challenge, but with a bit of luck and skill, we made it with only a moderate amount of stress and no damage.
Checking in at customs consisted of calling from a bank of phones set-up just outside the customs office, and after providing some information on us and our boat, we were on our way within half an hour to Ganges Marina on Salt Spring Island, which lays off the coast of Vancouver Island between Sydney and Naniamo, and is the largest of the southern Gulf Islands.
After a beautiful sightseeing cruise past North and South Pender Islands, we arrived at Ganges Marina just after 4pm. Once the Reaper was tied to the dock and we paid for our slip, we took a nice walk into "town" or village would be more like it. By the time we made the short 10 minute walk to the business district, most stores and shops were closed, so we checked out a cool little candy, chocolate and gelato ice cream shop, then walked across the street to a small shopping center and as it was with some of the other businesses, most of these shops were also closed for the day. Since there was no use in doing any more sightseeing in Ganges, we walked back to the boat and got things set-up for dinner.
Once the grilled brats were consumed, we hung out on the back (aft or stern) of the boat while the sun began its decent just behind us and played Yahtzee, which my competitive side is pleased to report that I won 2 out of 3 games by quite a large margin of victory. Oh, I can roll the dice, I just can't put words together using little square letters and playing off other words that are spelled out. I guess, you just have to play to your strengths and I guess tossing dice into a card board box top is one of mine.
After the Yahtzee match, we broke out the "entertainment" centre (see, we're in Canada and apparently it's the law that you have to spell words that end in "ter" as if you had dyslexia) to watch "The Black Dahlia", which I thought was a Spike Lee Joint, but turned out to be about two LA cops who were assigned to solve the infamous murder of Elizabeth Short, a wannabe actress who got in with the wrong sort of people while trying to "make it" in movies, which made it a Brian De Palma Joint. Oh well, you can't win em all.
Tomorrow is looking to be a day of shopping and just checking out the local sights, then relaxing on the boat. Not necessarily in that order...
1 comment:
lookin good Lewis
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