Friday July 27th – Today we left Squirrel Cove and headed to a new to us destination just at the start of Toba Inlet called Toba Wilderness. They recently put in all new docks and a nice covered gathering place on land but that’s all there is. It’s a remote location, all their power is provided via a diesel generator and water comes from the falls just above the docks.

Skylar and Zack got in the dinghy we were pulling behind the boat and started fishing just off the docks. Before we even got tied up they had 2 nice Yellow Eye Rockfish.

Once tied up we shut the generator off and plugged in to shore power. The generator was running while we were underway because we had the washer and dryer going. Now on shore power, we didn’t need the generator to run the equipment, but I noticed that we were not getting full 240 or 220 volt power at the dock. It was only 188 volts.

We all hiked to the waterfall up a trail then took the dinghies out to go swimming. Lots of fun in the hot weather and we found a waterfall that shot out into the sea. I got the nose of the dinghy so close it doused Skylar and filled our boat with what felt like 10 gallons of water. A super fun day filled with incredible views.

(Sub story below. Related to the voltage at the dock. Well not actually related, but I thought it was)
Ok, I’m going to fast forward a couple days, so I can tell this whole stupid story in one post. The following all happened over the course of the next several days. After leaving the dock the next day our dryer would not turn on. Todd and I checked that we had power getting to the dryer, which we did, and I also noticed the dryer door would not shut. However, the dryer power light indicator would not turn on. I figured that because of the low voltage situation at the dock we had fried the main board and the latch that keeps the door locked when in use had locked in the closed position with the door open when the board fried.

After a lot of phone calls and help from Kurt at American Tugs we found a new board at a parts supplier in California. Skylar had a couple friends flying up in a few days, so I had the board shipped to his friend’s house, so he could bring it up with him when he came up on the floatplane. I was proud of my resourcefulness.

For the next week and a half, we hung our clothes out to dry on the boat, luckily it was hot.

When the parts arrived, I installed the new board. Much to my frustration after install it still didn’t work!! I must have done something wrong I thought, so I went back and checked my work. Still didn’t work. Super frustrated I asked for help. Todd’s dad had his brother Brian onboard and he owns an auto repair shop, so I asked him for help. He went through everything and all checked out ok.

Then Brian discovered something very disturbing. Turns out the dryer didn’t turn on because the door wasn’t shut, and the door wasn’t shut because the lint trap was in backwards!!!! There was never anything wrong with the dryer! All we had to do is turn the lit trap around, so the door would shut.

I’m not even sure why I am writing this in the blog. I consider myself to be fairly mechanically inclined, but this was not one of my better moments.

Wednesday July 25th – Its Skylar’s birthday! 17 today, hard to believe. We pulled our anchor in Pendrell sound and headed for Squirrel Cove just a few miles away.

We rafted to our friends then had to take a swim because the heat was turning us loco. After cooling off we all ran the dinghies to the Squirrel Cove store just outside the bay to get some groceries. Well, groceries may be the wrong word, this store is more like a limited stock convivence store with random items, you never know what you are going to get. However, when you are up here you take what you can get. More importantly we were able to get much needed fuel for the dinghies.

Squirrel Cove has a huge saltwater lagoon that sits behind the bay. There’s one narrow channel that fills the lagoon at high tide and empties it at low tide. During the fill and empty phase, the channel runs like a river in reversing directions. It’s fun to swim it, kayak it or in our case take the dinghies through during the fill phase.

With the motors up Todd and I floated our dinghies through in some skinny water. Once inside its pretty deep (40’ in some spots) and makes a perfect spot to go fast pulling the kids around on the tube. They had a blast all taking turns as they got flung around the lagoon at 25mph. Zach and Ava needed some weight, so they went together, their blond hair flowing in the wind they looked exactly like brother and sister.

Now getting out of the lagoon was not so easy. The tide had not filled enough to match the level of the sea outside, so it was a flowing uphill battle. First, we tried to motor out, but the water was flowing too fast and it was too shallow. With Julie in the dinghy I pulled the boat walking in the water up to my waist through the current. Not an easy task, and now that I think about it why was Julie just sitting in the boat getting pulled by my donkey like strength!! Anyway, it turned out good because when we got to deeper water, she lowered the motor and gave it some gas to help us out of the flowing water. I jumped on and we both plowed through to an eddy and picked up the kids on shore.

Todd’s boat being quite a bit heavier than ours took a little more muscle. With two lines coming off the bow one person pulled from shore while the other person pulled from the opposite shore. It worked, but got pretty “squirrely” at one point when Zach, who was in the boat tried to power out in the deeper spot and started heading straight for a rock. He saved it, but it was close!

Skylar had a great 17th birthday dinner of tacos (his choice) with all 3 boats rafted together, and everyone having a great time. Happy birthday Skylar!!

The next day was spent in Squirrel Cove again, swimming and relaxing. We made a 6-mile dinghy run to Teakerne Arm where there’s an amazing waterfall with Cassel lake right above. A short hike leads to the lake where we swam in the warm fresh water.

Monday July 23^rd– Time to stay put for a few days anchored in Pendrell Sound.  The weather is HOT!, and we are in the perfect place to enjoy the heat.  Water temperatures at 76 degrees makes it easy to jump off the boat and cool off.

Lots to do here and an absolutely beautiful place to do it in.  Swimming in the warm water it’s hard to believe as you look up a 5,000-foot mountain that has snow on it.

In Vancouver, an impulse purchase had us carrying home a wake surfboard.  We wanted to try and pull it behind the dinghy. We knew the dinghy wouldn’t be able to produce a wake to use it as a true wake surfer, but we were just looking for something fun to mess around on.  Skylar went first and got right up.  He got the feel of it then started carving back and forth.  Lots of fun but then it was my turn.  I jumped in the 1,000-foot-deep water and Skylar gunned it to pull me up. The first try was a no go! I thought I was going to drown as the little 30 horsepower dinghy tried to pull me out of the water.  On the 2^ndtry I found that if I hung on long enough, water trying to make its way in, in every way possible, I would eventually pop out of the water and surf on the top.  It was fun!, and exhausting!  On my last run I got a little too confident and caught an edge while carving.  This resulted in a huge faceplant that caused a major headache.  It was worth it, but there’s going to be some sore muscles.

Over the next couple days, we all had a blast.  One minute you are swimming and the next you are pulling up a shrimp pot with dinner. Fishing, shrimping, picking huckleberries, swimming, wakeboarding, rope swing into the water, hiking, kayaking, paddle boarding, all in one location makes for a really fun place to be!

Saturday July 21st – Today we are leaving windy Howe Sound to trek up the Georgia Strait to Pender Harbor. We called two different marinas in Pender Harbor, both didn’t answer after repeated attempts. Finally, one of them answered and took our reservation for moorage that night. It’s about a 40nm run and the weather was not great. Forecast is for calming wind in the afternoon, so we hung out at our anchorage in Howe Sound for more favorable conditions. They never came.

So, we left our anchorage in 15 knots of wind and headed for the entrance to Howe Sound that would take us to the Georgia Strait. Not too bad to start but as we entered the Georgia Strait we had wind against current combined with the tidal flow from Howe Sound created some large steep waves. The boat got rocked around really good but this time we were prepared with everything put away and lunch already taken down. I told Julie and Ava to sit their butts in the pilot house and look up the whole time. They did, and that helped keep the sea sickness to a minimum. The boat took it on the nose like a champ, but it was unsettling as the boat plowed through the waves then what felt like a freefall off the other side. We spent about 2 hours in the real snotty stuff then conditions improved a little for the remainder of the trip.

With an extremely salty boat, we pulled into Painted Boat Marina hoping to make it to the grocery store before they closed. When I made the reservation they never gave us a slip assignment, so I called them on the phone. The guy on the other end took my name and boat name, then there was silence on the other end as he was obviously trying to locate my reservation. “I’m sorry sir but we don’t have a reservation for you” he said. “I just talked to a guy this morning and made the reservation” I said. Again, there was silence on the other end then he said, “did you give a credit card or get a confirmation email”? “No, they never asked for that information” I said getting a little more frustrated. “Well, I’m sorry sir but we don’t have your reservation and we do not have any room for you”. In a slightly more stern voice, I told him I was really frustrated because I just made the reservation this morning. Again, he said, “I’m sorry sir but we don’t have room, I hope you can find a place”. I hung up the phone and instantly realized I was the idiot trying to dock at the wrong marina! During my multiple calls to two different marinas in Pender Harbor I thought I was talking to Painted Boat but actually I made reservations at Garden Bay. Silly me.

Garden Bay took us right in, but the grocery store is across the bay, so we quickly got the dinghy down to get to the store before they closed. Loaded up with pizza for dinner and a full basket of groceries we dinghied back for a late dinner on the boat after a long day.

But it wasn’t over. At 1am the band that was playing at the Garden Bay Pub decided to extend the party on a small boat right in front of ours. It all started with Mama Mia blasting as loud as the stereo would go and then just kept going for another couple hours. 6am departure is going to be tough.

Sunday July 22nd. 6am the alarm goes off. After not much sleep due to the Mama Mia party boat, Julie and I got up and stumbled through the coffee brewing process. 6:30am we fired up the engine for the long run to Pendrell Sound in Desolation Sound.

Finally, some smooth water! The run was beautiful all the way into Desolation. Some friends of ours were already up in the area and we are going to meet them in Pendrell. We arrived first, anchored and stern tied in an area perfect for swimming.

Pendrell Sound has some of the warmest waters in the area. We measured 72-74 degrees and clear all the way down to about 30’. If I didn’t know any better, you would think we were in Hawaii. In this long inlet the water is 1,300 feet deep and the mountains shoot straight up. It’s absolutely amazing!

We settled in and brought out all the water toys. New this year is a 5’X15’ inflatable dock that we planned on tying off to the swim step to extend our swimming pleasure. Its big and took some work to get blown up, but once in the water it provided a super fun platform to swim off of.

Our friends arrived and rafted up to us. We all swam in the heat and enjoyed the warm waters of Pendrell.

Friday July 20th – Our schedule today had us leaving Vancouver headed to Howe Sound, just to the north east of us. Howe Sound is the closest semi remote destination for vessels leaving Vancouver and there is a huge vacation home community on Bowen Island. It’s an area we have always wanted to see but have never been in there. The Union Steamship Co. marina we wanted to check out was full, so we decided to find an anchorage.

The wind forecast didn’t look good especially given the fact that we would be exposed to the Strait of Georgia much of the way. It called for the wind dying down in the early afternoon, so we waited until about 1:00pm then left the dock, got fuel and headed out to English Bay. The seas just kept building as we made our way out to open water. Suddenly 4-5’ waves were stacked due to the wind against current. We secured the boat but a little too late. A couple large stainless-steel cups in the galley zipped off the counter denting the wood floor and sending water all over.

We slogged through it, taking lots of spray over the boat. The motion of the boat didn’t agree with Julie and Ava. They were feeling terrible, especially Ava got pretty sick.

We decided to anchor in Gambier Island’s, Port Graves. Even in the anchorage the wind was still blowing a steady 15 knots. After waiting a while to make sure the boat was secure, we took the dinghy to shore for a walk in the woods. A beautiful trail showed signs to Lost Lake but no telling how far it was. We kept going and going up the mountain until our “walk” turned into an unplanned hike. I got out my phone map to try and figure out how much further. It Looked quite a bit further, so we turned around (Skylar was not happy). Turns out the lake was about a 6-mile round trip ordeal. Our walk in the woods turned into a 4-mile hike, but it was fun!

The wind calmed down late in the evening for a restful night sleep. Only problem now is the wind forecast is about the same for tomorrow and we have to make our way up the Georgia Strait.

Wednesday July 18th – Thursday 19th. After a quiet and rest full first night in Vancouver it was time to check out the city. So many things to do here that we decided to add a 3rd night to our reservation. We were lucky that the 130’ boat who’s spot we were occupying, was not due back for another 2 days.

A little water taxi shuttled us to Grandville Island (not an actual island) where we checked out all the little shops and market. Brian, a friend of mine in the coffee business who owns Blendz also has a tea and kombucha bar in Vancouver called o5. It was 1 mile away from our location, so we decided to make the trek. This is not your ordinary tea bar. It’s very high-end tea and all the kombucha is brewed onsite. I knew Ava especially would love the experience where the vibe is slow, relaxed and fancy. We tried a few different teas, some fancy snacks and had the best kombucha ever. Ava had so much fun, leaving she said, “I will remember this experience forever”.

We had Dinner on the boat that night as we watched all the people walking our dock to get to the water taxi pickup station.

The next day we grabbed a taxi and headed for the aquarium in Stanly Park. Very busy with kid groups but what an incredible aquarium. A few days ago, we saw a dead sturgeon floating in the water in the Gulf Islands. We had never heard of sturgeon in these waters and figured someone must have caught it in the mouth of some river then chucked it overboard. However, we confirmed at the aquarium that there is indeed White Sturgeon in these here waters. We had lunch in the only restaurant in the park then took a taxi to Gas Town to check out more of the city. After a delicious dinner in Yale Town we prepared for our departure northbound tomorrow.