Friday, August 19, 2011

With only a few days of vacation left, we had a family meeting the previous evening to decide how and where we wanted to spend the remainder of our vacation. We decided that visiting Chemainus on Vancouver Island and Ganges on Salt Spring Island would be a nice end to our great vacation. This morning is the first time during the trip where we made any attempt to leave at a pre-determined time, however it was more important today since we had to time the currents at Dodd Narrows just south of Naniamo. Dodd Narrows can run really quick and has claimed many boats much larger than this one. We hit the narrows at 7:45 a.m. at slack water and followed a tug pulling a raft of logs. We completed the short 23.3 mile trip to Chemainus, B.C. and tied up to the dock for the evening.

Chemainus is somewhat similar to Ganges (where we are headed tomorrow) and they have a nice little downtown area that is very attractive to boaters and people heading up Vancouver Island by car. We had lunch, ice cream, looked around town at the various shops and eateries and enjoyed the famous artist murals painted on the sides of various buildings around town. Later in the afternoon, all of us except Uncle Raymond packed up the dinghy and headed across the bay to Thetis Island where we had appetizers and drinks at the small pub at Telegraph Landing and headed to a small beach to swim. There were hundreds of baby crabs running around in the gravels along the coast—it’s very nice to see the sea life doing so well here. We came back to the boat and ate the fresh chili Uncle Raymond had worked on all afternoon while we were gone. As is the case with most evenings on the boat, we play a few rounds of our favorite card game, Spite & Malice and enjoyed some freshly prepared bloody mary’s, complete with the celery salt, green olives and fresh lime.

Building-side murals in Chemainus: