Sunday August 3rd:
Today was AWESOME!!
We woke up to a sun shiny day. We pulled the anchor and headed out of Secret Cove around 7:30am or so. There was no wind so we decided to motor through Welcome Passage and once past Pirate Rock and had b-fast we would raise some sail and head towards Nanimo on the other side of the Straights of Georgia.
As I mentioned before, the day started off nice and only got better. As we motored past Pirate Rock and started hoisting the mainsail and foresail, the wind picked up to about 8-10 knotsout of a clear blue sky to the north, we took that as a good omen and hoisted our third sail the Yankee (The Donger). As the day wore on, the wind kept increasing to about 20 knots. But since the wind only started at about the same time we did, the waves had not had the chance to build. So we were abolutly hauling ass across the Straights on a broad reach.
As the wind picked up a little more and gusting even higher, we decided to drop the Yankee sail. By now we had 3 – 4 foot waves and were doing a very little bit of surfing down some of the bigger ones. Unless you sail, there is no way to describe how fun this is, the whole thing. Wind, waves, weather, the unknown…It’s just awesome.
We took the next two videos about 3/4 of the way across the Straights of Georgia. They of course in no way show just how fast we were going, or how the boat would surf down the waves. Or how hard the wind was blowing. But trust me….it as absolutly a blast!! Probably my best day sailing to date.
Look out! Cappy CB at the helm!
What we thought would be a 4 hour trip over, only ended up taking us a little over 2 hours. We were in Nanimo and anchored just after lunchtime.
Of course, all that wind on the way over meant that there would be wind in the anchorage as well. And it did make for a few anchoring “discussions” between me and Tawn :P , but before long we were settled in and checking out the town and the historical island before too long.
One other thing we wanted to check out while we were here was a bar called the Dinghy Dock, which turned out to be a very cool little place. Really the only way to get to it is by dinghy or small boat.
Two bars in two days!! Holy crap, we are out of control!!
We did a little hiking in the state park island here and checked out downtown a little as well. The picture below was taken from the island looking back across the bay the boat was anchored in to downtown Nanimo.
Of course it was back to the Dinghy Dock for a few cocktails to close the place down.
The big plan for tommorow is to get directions to a sunken battleship and go scuba diving on it tommorow.