April 22, 2022
We signed up for some sailing courses with the Blue Water Cruising Association for later in April over in Nanaimo. Since our jobs are pretty flexible with the in-office time, we decided to take advantage of the nice weather and head out a week early. What better of a day to take off than Earth Day (insert a #sustainable comment here).
A slow, lazy sail for earth day
Our destination was Plumper Cove over on Keats because it would make a good hop off point for our trip further to Nanaimo and is close to Gibsons for some fun exploring.
It’s the second time we’ve gone out this year and thankfully leaving the marina was uneventful. Unfortunately, there was no wind once we popped out into the Straight. By the time we turned up Queen Charlotte strait, the wind was light but enough to get the boat moving along at 3-4 knots. Most of the boats we saw were motoring, but we’re slowly becoming stubborn and have decided we bought a sailboat not a motor boat…plus diesel is expensive! Eventually we sailed right up to the entrance of the anchorage. We’re not stubborn (or good) enough to anchor under sail, but we’re happy with how close to the moorings we got. The anchorage was pretty empty and we decided to take the easy route and grab a mooring.
Keats island is home to Plumber Cove Marine Park, which is BC’s oldest marine park. There’s 8 mooring bouys and a small dock. On shore theres a pretty decent campsite and some hiking trails. It’s also about a 2 nautical mile dinghy ride away from Gibsons. the downside is that it can become a rolly anchorage in the wrong conditions
The last time we were here it was a heat wave and we didn’t do much more than swimming. This time it was still pretty cool so we took the dogs on a hike around the park before getting back to the boat for the first nice sunset of the season.
The next morning, we decided to leave the dogs behind and head over to Gibsons. For some reason we both love visiting the sunshine coast and this is one of our favourite stops. When we sold old Crew’s Control, we heard she ended up in the marina over here and we wanted to see the old girl. We stopped by the Black Bean for some coffees and carrot cake before heading down to the docks for a visit. We found her, she’s still floating, but looking a little worse for wear.
Another day done and another sundowner on the horizon. Mark’s been working on perfecting his Moscow recipe and tonight’s did not disappoint. We kept it down to one because we knew we’d have an early morning to sail over to Nanaimo.
Solid spring weekend away
NM Sailed: 18