Monday July 14th:
If your following along on the Map, the blue line is the route for day two.
In order to meet up with Ghost and Winddancer in Pender Harbor, we had another long day ahead of us. If it had not been for the fact that our route was taking us through Porlier Passage we could have gotten up whenever we wanted and just reached our destination a little later. But Slack tide at the pass was at 8:14am, which meant we had to be up and moving by 5am. This is a horribly early time normally, but on vacation it is doubly so.
Our usual plan of attack on early days like this is to get up, start the engine, raise the anchor and get moving. Then while underway we will make B-fast and coffee. That lets us sleep just that much longer. Actually that is the plan on all days, early or not.
The trip through the Gulf Islands was fairly univentful. There was not a breath of wind. But it was sunny and warm, and there was lots to look at. It seemed like a shame to be blasting through without stopping to check out any of the places we were passing by, but we would be coming back this way at the end of the month. So it was’nt too bad.
We got to Polier Passage at about 8:30, so we missed slack tide but the tide was flooding which meant it would be going the same direction we were. Polier Passage is not too narrow, but the amount of water that flows through can get the tide moving up to nine knots at times and the whole passage is littered with hidden rocks. This makes going through at slack water or as close to it as you can a pretty good idea.
Once through the passage and out into the Straights of Georgia the wind was blowing out of the north west at about 15-17 knots. With the pass behind us we decided to do some sailing, even if it meant getting to Pender Harbor a little later than planned.
**{I have video of a small bit of the sailing we did, but I can’t seem to get it edited correctly to post it up here. I’ll work on it and hopefully get it posted soon.}**
We had maybe an hour or two of good sailing, but the wind died just as we reached Thrasher Reef, and with a name like Thrasher Reef, it might be a good idea to have the engine on as we passed through it.
Once on the other side of the reef the wind completly died and left us with a freaking awesome sunny day, but no wind. So with the sails down, we continued north under power.
I can’t recall the exact time we got to Pender Harbor, it must have been about 4-5pm. At any rate we negoiated the narrow rock strewn entrance and found our way all the way back to Garden Bay where we spotted Ghost and Winddancer rafted together. We had spoke with Curtis (from Winddancer) on the radio a little earlier and he let us know they were working on a small engine problem on Ghost and for us to anchor out on our own.
We circled their raft up, catching up on a few small bits of stuff then proceeded to find a good place to drop the anchor. Garden Bay it’self is pretty small, and at this time of day it was pretty full. The weather forecast was calling for calm weather tommorow, so we decided to anchor outside of Garden Bay in Pender Harbor. Which is still very protected.
Once anchored we dinghied over to the raft up for hugs, handshakes, beers and some catching up. Ghost had been out for 2 weeks already so they had stories to tell and they wanted to hear about our trip up. Winddancer had a few tales to tell as well.
Originally we thought we would stay in Garden Bay for a day and stock up the fridge, but we had loaded up so well in Seattle before we left we only needed a few items (Ice and fresh Veggies). We decided to get up in the morning and head further north.
Scotty, Curtis and myself decided to head to shore to the IGA and get some stuff before dinner. Tommorrow would be about half as long a day as the previous two. We only had one major obsticle to cross. Malibu Rapids. This absolutly had to be crossed at the right time, which was in the evening. So we planned to leaving our around 11am. Which was fine with us, since we were tired of getting up so friggin early.
