Continuing On

After spending two nights anchored at Newcastle Island in Nanaimo, we decided that the weather sounded good for a crossing of the Strait of Georgia on May 6th. Whiskey Golf was not open, always a good thing. WG is a naval training range that is directly in the path of cruising boats leaving Nanaimo to cross the Strait. When they are open, both U.S. and Canadian navies use the range for unarmed torpedo practice. Unarmed or not, we wouldn’t want to get hit by one. When closed, we cruisers are free to transit across the range. That was a good thing, but the swells from the SE kept us rocking and rolling for the 3 hour crossing. At one point even the captain and his chair got upset. Mac nearly had a nervous breakdown and the first mate wasn’t far behind. It was our worst crossing ever, but it could have been a lot worse. We didn’t even take any salt water over the bow! We anchored in Pender Harbor for two nights after hearing dire weather warnings. Malaspina Strait can be very nasty, too. From there we went on to one of our most favorite anchorages, Squirrel Cove. With only 5 other boats at anchor it looked a lot different than the July-August fiasco when over a hundred boats are often there. From Squirrel we have to time our departure in order to arrive at the Yuculta (yew-cla-tah)Rapids in time for slack water. Actually, there are 5 rapids to transit, Yuculta, Gillard, Dent, Green Point and Whirlpool. We usually stop after the first three, but with a fairly low current speed due to the phase of the moon, we were able to go through all of them and anchor in Forward Harbor. This is a natural stop to wait and see what Johnstone Strait is going to dish out. Early the next morning we got the weather report stating that winds were supposed to ease, so off we went. It was a very nice 3 hour cruise on water that had been nearly impassable just a few days before due to Gale Force winds of over 40mph. We went on to Lagoon Cove Marina, always a must stop. We fueled up there at $1.10 a liter!!! As we came through the Blow Hole, we spotted our first bear of the trip on the Minstrel Island shore. A very pretty, shiny, black bear. Even though we were the only visitors at the dock, Bill cooked up some prawns for us and we had a nice visit with him and his summer crew. On to Shawl Bay Marina to have another traditional visit and do laundry. We’ve done our first pawning here with catches of about 50 per pull. Our next challenge is Cape Caution, our longest ocean voyage. It’s 86 miles from Shawl Bay to Fury Cove. About 50 of that is open ocean. The weather has been nice, so we are hoping it continues.