May 23, 2022 – Poets Cove Hot Tub Thieves
It was time to move on from Galiano and settle somewhere for the week ahead. We’ve always had a soft spot for Poet’s Cove, just not the cost of the Marina, so we decided to head over and try the anchorage next door out to start the workweek.
We had a slight breeze, enough to raise the sails and drift along. We dodged some ferries as we came down alongside Pender Island. Our slow pace rewarded us with a humpback whale show. Still no killer whale sightings, but we’d take anything to keep us entertained on this slow trip. We spent the rest of the day drifting with the current and watching jellyfish float by with one eye out for more whales.
The Beaumont marina park anchorage was almost empty with just a couple of other sailboats. We didn’t know where to anchor versus grabbing a mooring, so we opted for the mooring. We dropped the paddle boards and went for a cruise around the rocky beaches.
We took the time to dinghy over to Poets Cove and helped ourselves to the hot tub, pool and showers. But we did buy $15 coffees (what?!?!?!) the next morning, so I felt better about using the facilities for free.
NM Sailed: 20
May 24, 2022 – Back To Work
Back to work, but first an early morning hike. We took the pricey coffee (which was terrible and not worth the $15) for a hike up a ridge with the dogs. We had a great view over the anchorage and it made us long for days where we could just explore until we were ready to go back to the boat. That wasn’t going to be today since we both had early meetings. Back to the boat for us.
Working at anchor is relaxing. It’s finally nice enough to sit in the cockpit with the enclosure up so it’s a fresh air location for working. It makes the day go by pretty quick. Having the Starlink is really enabling us to get out and stay in remote areas with no concern for our bandwidth use.
After work we went on a little dinghy exploration to North Pender Island. We were really looking to go to the coffee shop with the dosas, but they had closed up for the day. So we explored over by Port Browning. Not much to see, but the anchorage was huge. We planned to revisit it someday.
May 25, 2022 – On the Move
Since I needed to be back in Vancouver on Thursday, we decided to move over to Salt Spring so I could get the seaplane to the City. It was going to be a short sail and we didn’t bother checking the winds first since it was just a place we needed to go.
My boat job is researching anchorages. I had looked at Ganges and read that it is typically full of moorings now so you need to anchor far out from the town. I did a bit more research and saw that we could get some space on one of the municipal docks. So we opted for that. We also needed the added benefit of water since we hadn’t sorted the watermaker yet.
Luckily there was an easy space to grab the dock and it was right in the heart of the village.
We had been to Ganges once before for my cousin’s wedding and I remember seeing people on their boats at the docks. I thought back then how cool it was that people we visiting by boat. It never even crossed my mind that I’d be one of them someday.
We managed to sail from Pender Island directly over to Salt Spring on a nice broad reach in some mid-teens wind. The wind even carried us almost all the way up the harbour before dying out.
The dock was really easy to navigate and we tied up no problem. We had a nice chat with out neighbour who was chartering their boat for the week. They gave us a tip about the Saturday market, so we decided that we’d extend our stay so we could check it out.
It turned out my cousins, Jo and Eric, were also on the island on vacation. We weren’t sure we’d make it work to meet up so Mark and I went to dinner expecting to eat alone and ran into them. It ended up turning into a later night than anticipated, but worthwhile to catch up with some people we don’t get to see often.
NM sailed: 16.8
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