Heading south to Victoria to pick up Chris and Virginia who are coming up on the Clipper in a couple days.
Our trip through Seymour Narrows was painless. However, around Campbell River, we lost the stabilizers. Cycling power only made it worse so Dave had to go into the super hot engine room to pin the fins. You cannot let them flop around, especially when backing, or they can be damaged or worse put a hole in your boat. The trip over the Comox River bar is always nerve wracking. The charts show 2 feet depth on either side of the narrow, but well marked channel. His watch even warned him when his pulse rate was over 120. We settled in at the anchorage on Denman Island, again.
We leave the anchorage on the 5th heading for Fairwinds Marina (again). Halfway down Denman Island there is an interesting ferry that uses a cable to pull itself across the channel. You look for the light to go green to tell you it is safe to cross the cable. We arrive at Fairwinds Marina to the same slip as last time. It has been fairly calm so not having the stabilizers in the Straights has not been a problem.
We depart on the 6th for Montague Harbour. The wind forecast was 10-15 on the stern but we saw 20 knots on the nose.
The 7th was spent anchored in Port Browning. Dave was a little nervous because the forecast was for the winds to come up but never did.
We arrived at the Wharf Street Marina (Victoria) on the 8th. On the way, a sailboat motoring with its headsail up (so could not see well) cut us off in a very narrow channel. The emergency 5-blast from our awesome horn hot their attention but it was pretty close. We had the right-way (and size-away) but it would have been a mess to collide in such a narrow spot with the current ripping through.
Our guests arrive on the 9th. We depart for a cruise through the Islands on the 10th.