Sunday, July 25
Day 40 (but who’s counting)

Happy 31st birthday, Douglas! (Wow, my youngest is over 30 - can’t lie about my age any more. I don’t think it’s possible for a 40-year-old to have a 31-year-old, is it, Trina???)

We’re back in Nanaimo. Got blown in here this afternoon after a long day. We left Comox at 5:30 this morning, in strong wind warnings. We decided to take a look and see if we could get to the south end of Denman Island, at least. Well, gosh, it was pretty darn calm, wind speeds about 10 (they claimed 15, but it didn’t seem that strong) and a fairly low swell……2 hours later we were at the end of Denman Island. “Hmmmm,” says we, “still seems pretty good. Let’s go on a bit, we can always anchor in Parksville.” Of course, we did remind ourselves that the area between Denman Island and Qualicum is probably pretty rolly, since it’s wide open to the Straits. Here’s a picture of what the waters looked like as we headed towards Nanaimo….


If we’d seen that, we’d have stayed put. As we went further south, the winds got stronger. Here in Nanaimo it’s blowing about 22-25 knots right now. This place is insane. There’s some kind of bathtub race going on, and right now, as I sit on the visitor’s dock at the Nanaimo Yacht Club, I count 23 boats coming in and out of this bay - not included the 35 or 40 boats sitting at anchor over at Newcastle. Note to selves: Do not come to Nanaimo on a sunny weekend!Newcastle boats

We feel as though we’ve come through a time warp. Friday morning we were in quiet Grace Harbour with a few other boats stern-tied to shore in relatively peaceful Desolation Sound. And we thought THAT was crowded! Ha. Coming back into civilization is a rude awakening. Guess I’ll have to actually brush my hair and put on decent clothes to go up to the yacht club! We’ve gotten used to everyone in fleece and jeans with rumpled hat-hair. We fit right in.

Tomorrow we’ll go through Dodd Narrows (our last Securite call of the season, probably) and anchor in one of the Gulf Islands. Then we’re thinking we’ll go through US customs on Wednesday morning at Friday Harbor. We have Nexus cards, but when we came north Canadian immigration told Bob that his card wasn’t in the system - mine was, so, clearly, I am more trustworthy than Bob. They finally took his info over the phone when he read his ID number off the Nexus card in his wallet. I don’t know what happened - we got the cards at the same time, from the same customs officer….Oh, well. We’ll see if they got it straightened out when we try to come through the border. I should be safe - I have no citrus fruit, no potatoes, no onions and no guns. Now, Bob, on the other hand……….how far is Leavenworth, KS, from Oak Harbor????