July 5th: Nanaimo to Garden Bay, Pender Harbour, off Mainland BC
Short sleeve weather. Yipeeee! The warm weather was due in part to no wind, so we motored all day.
9:30 am departure, 4:30 pm arrival…. Long time for ~30 miles… though we did waylay in between and got swept back a mile or more while we did. Pender Harbour is long, with several fingers. Puttering slowly to not create a wake (waves whose rocking disrupts other boaters), it took us a while to find our place to anchor. We dropped anchor well inside, in the area known as Garden Bay. We were welcomed by a pair of bald eagles, circling.
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| Our sailboat is one of those little white dots toward the right. |
Paddled our dinghy over to the Garden Bay Provincial Park and walked over to the Garden Bay Marina, and noticed posters for a “Meet Draw.” The gal at the John Henry store seemed surprised when I asked what that was. She said whoit was a fund raiser for (the local youth paddling club) but not what it was…. I had to ask several times but was finally able to piece it together – a raffle for meat. She probably just thought I was dense. We paddled back to the boat and tried paddling down another finger of the bay, “GunBoat,” but the strong current discouraged us. Good call; we later found the current there gets up to 8 knots. About 15 feet from our dinghy we saw a piece of wood that looked a bit like a sea lion head. When that “piece of wood” suddenly dove back down we realized it was a sea lion. We paddled over to the Pender Bay Marina, and walked up, and I do mean UP a 45 degree incline, to the Grasshopper, winded.
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| Velvety antlered deer at Pender Harbour |
We meandered down on the other side at more leisurely pace down that slope to the other local marina. Down slope to our boat, we came across a family of deer, male “Dad” with velvety antlers, female “Mom” and “junior” happily chomping away.
Dinner was my camping classic, easy chicken curry: chicken flavored rice mix, with chicken breast, curry, pineapple, fresh ginger and green onions added.
