Pender Harbour

We had a nice little three hour sail up the Sunshine Coast from Secret Cove to Pender Harbour this morning, precipitated in a bit of a panic but concluded by a very leisurely afternoon.

The panic: after planning a lazy morning and a slow start upon bedding down last night, I got up this morning without a care in the world. We had a fine breakfast of omelettes with smoked cheddar and salami (I found both at the farmer's market on Granville Island) and lazed about checking weather on the Internet. Then I looked out the window. You may recall my describing our anchorage last night as “tenous.” This morning, it had become downright cozy—the tide was out, and the shore was encroaching on our already slender spot.

I wasn't immediately worried; we'd done the math on the expected tidal range and figured our swinging room would be adequate even at the lowest value, which wouldn't occur until 11AM anyway (it was eight at this point). But it looked too tight to me anyway, and it looked like the tide had dropped much lower than expected.

“It was only supposed to drop three feet to low this morning, right?” I asked Mandy.

“Yes.”

“It's already down at least four!”

Turned out there had been a “ahem” miscommunication about dates or locations or some such the previous night when the tides were checked; what we thought was a drop of only three feet was instead going to be nearly ten.

So I bound up on deck, hauled up the anchor, and away we went.

After that, the sailing was great—we motored out of Secret Cove, and into Pender Harbour, but everything in between was lovely downwind cruising. I still didn't get a chance to try Don's whisker pole, unfortunately—although the wind was constant, the direction shifted frequently and while we didn't have any uncontrolled gybes, we had a few unplanned ones. Either way, I didn't go to the trouble of setting the pole or a preventer, since it was light wind and we were back and forth between tacks frequently.

We dropped anchor pretty close to the Seattle Yacht Club outstation dock in Garden Bay in Pender Harbour. Pender Harbour is much like Secret Cove only bigger—there are a number of little nooks and bays within it, each with a set of marinas, private docks, and vacationing boats anchored about. When we told people we were going to Alaska, they generally seemed to picture a lot of empty space and desolate, stark wilderness, but the Sunshine Coast north of Vancouver is Party Central, crowded with people, homes, vacation plots, and boats. It's still quite a lot of fun; there is much to see and enjoy. The weather continues to be fabulous, and it's still a holiday weekend up here and everyone is having fun.

We inflated our dinghy and rowed to the dinghy dock at Garden Bay Provincial Marine Park, then had a nice walk over to John Henry's Marina, which has a small general store. We were out of soap, our salt was caked into a slab after wintering on the boat, and we just needed a little hike to stretch. Although not designed for walkers in the slightest, Pender Harbour is a beautiful little community and we enjoyed all the various homes and gardens we hiked by on the way.

Mandy, with her childlike fascination, particularly liked the shoreline at the park, which was lined with starfish, anemones, and other various aquatic creatures going about their daily business. All she has been able to talk about today is her desire to buy an island and live on it, presumably in this general vicinity, and populated with similar sorts of creatures. I've finally gotten her to snap out of it and put her to work up on deck scrubbing the chrome while I type this. She is out of battery power for her laptop; my little Eee PC can plug into the cigarette lighter with a generic adapter I have, so I can keep going like the Energizer bunny... particularly now that I have the solar panel rigged up and it's so sunny out.

We'll probably stay here another day or so. I think I mentioned we are bagging the idea of going up Princess Louisa Inlet this time out, so we have the ability to take our time and this seems like a fun place to spend a couple of days. The anchorage is good, services are close, and the weather is nice—would that the whole trip were like this!