We left Ganges at 9:35am with our destination being Wallace Island.  Skylar is now doing a great job of preparing the boat to dock and putting all lines and fenders away when leaving.  Its nice having another able crewmember!

We headed north up Trincomali Channel running almost 8 knots.  Wallace Island his two main anchorages, Conover Cove and Princess Cove.  Conover has a small dock (we have stayed there before) and some anchorage space.  Princess only has a dingy dock so you have to anchor.  This island used to be owned by a famous photographer who first discovered Marilyn Monroe.   The first anchorage we came to was Conover Cove.  We pulled in and looked around but the dock was full and not much more room to anchor.  We decided to keep going to Princess Cove because we have never stayed there before and thought it would be fun to try it out.  At 11:50pm and 12.18 nautical miles traveled we arrived in Princess Cove.

Both of these coves are extremely small and require you to stern tie when anchoring.  Stern tying is a technique used to keep you from swinging on anchor.  You drop your anchor then back your boat up toward land setting your anchor in the process.  Then you grab a long line, jump in your dingy with one end of the line and head for land.  At many places where stern tying is routine there will be metal eyes bolted into the rocks along the shoreline.  These eyes are used to loop your line through and take it back to your boat.  When its all said and done you have one line going from your boat to shore, through the eye then back to your boat.  This allows you to adjust how much tension you have on your anchor and makes for an easy get away when its time to leave.  With this technique a lot more boats can fit in a small anchorage without the risk of swinging into each other.

It can be tricky to complete the whole process.  Preparation is important and we still have some kinks to work out before we have it down.  Today things went pretty smooth though anchoring and stern tying in Princess Cove.

Skylar took the Kyak out for some fishing in the cove while Julie, Ava and I relaxed on the sun deck.

Trip Log 179.45 nautical miles

It was time to re-provision our food supply and Ava couldn’t stop talking about apple pie, so it was off to Ganges on Saltspring Island.  Ganges is a small town with a nice grocery store, a marine supply store and many other small shops.

We took off from Portland Island at 10:55am for about a 2 hour run and 12.7 nautical miles arriving at the Ganges Marina at 12:50pm.

We have a love hate relationship with this town.  It has so much potential with great retail shops, close to town marina and the landscape is really nice.  However, our nickname for the town is “Grungies”.  Take downtown Olympia times 10!  Half the people walking around haven’t taken a shower in months and the smell that follows them around makes you want to run and hide.  Go to the park and you will find full on boobs hanging out, used to feed their children so it’s OK.  The sailboat next to us had a 3+ year-old boy running around naked and the mom talking about how kids need to be allowed to express themselves.

The Ganges Marina is not very nice either.  At $70 for one night moorage and $3 per bag of garbage it’s a rip off.   However, they are working on improvements and have made some since the last time we were there.  With all that said the people all over town, are all very nice.

Lunch was first on the list when we arrived so we headed over to the Tree House restaurant.  We have never been there before but it was highly recommended by a guy on the dock.  The food was great but the environment was a little dirty.  The staff was awesome and very accommodating.

After browsing through some shops it was off to the bakery all the way on the other side of town for Ava’s apple pie she has been asking about for days.  We were in luck, but she had to wait until after dinner.

We filled up the cart at the grocery store (even got some free salmon carcass for crabbing!)  then had to get it all back to the boat about ½ mile away.  We all felt like pack mules but we made it in one trip.  Julie was especially a trooper because she is still in a lot of pain from her butt injury.  We had a great dinner at the boat then it was time for Ava’s apple pie.  She took about 2 bites then said, “I’m done”.

Trip Log – 167.27 nautical miles

The lightning storm brought with it some unsettled weather the following day.  We left Bedwell at 11am for a short 7.18 nautical mile trip to Portland Island.  Once out of the harbor the wind was blowing 20 knots creating a lumpy ride but our boat sure did handle it well. 

Portland Island was first settled by Hawaiian immigrants in the 1880’s.  So it was fitting to make this one of our stops.  Our boat name “Kama Hele” is a Hawaiian word for “The Traveler”.

We anchored in Princess bay on the south end of the island.  We surfed through the tight entrance and anchored in choppy water.  Every time we stop anywhere Skylar instantly begs to start fishing.  At every location he always seems to pull some kind of fish out of the water.  Today it was a nice flounder!  Julie was food deprived (this is not a good thing) so she started a great salmon lunch that we BBQ’d on the back of the boat.

Portland Island is one of our favorite stop in the Gulf Islands.  There is not much there as the whole thing is a provincial park.  There is a small dinghy dock and lots of trails on the island. When we were here a few years ago it was sea glass heaven.  We found tons of it here and today was no exception!

We boarded the dinghy for the trip to shore to do some hiking.  We had a nice hike along a trail above the shore then took the path down to a beach.  We had the bright idea to keep following the beach back to the dinghy to maximize our sea glass hunting.   We figured there would be a way back up to the trail somewhere along the way.  It always looked like just around the next corner would be our answer.  Eventually we could go no further.  Our only option was to scale this super steep trail or more accurately a cliff.  Skylar made it up, then Julie.  It was my job to get myself and Ava up.  No way Ava was going to make it on her own so I had to carry her as far as I could then it got too steep.  I was able to push her over this log so she could sit there while Julie grabbed her and pulled her up the rest of the way.  It was not fun actually really scary trying to get her up there.  So glad that was over when we made it to the top safely.

After that near death experience we thought our trials were over.  Climbing back in the dinghy we still had to get back to the boat in the rough water.  The dinghy carried us safely to the boat but getting off the dinghy and on to the big boat is another story.  As we approached the boat Julie tried to grab on but we were getting thrown all over.  I told her to bail out and as she did she sat back down on what she thought was the seat but was actually a metal bar next to the seat.  She broke her butt!  Not really, but she severely injured her tail bone.  A huge black bruise formed and she is in a lot of pain.  Sorry no photo.

Trip Log 154.57 nautical miles