Swimmingly

I've already lost track of time. How long has it been since we left Port Townsend? Not a month, surely. Three weeks? Two weeks? It seems like we are making very good time but we haven't been rushing in the least: we've had mostly good winds the whole way up.

We spent a week or so in Vancouver, anchored in False Creek, and it was pretty miserable. It rained a lot, and we were very caught up with work matters and various other preparation and outfitting that needed to be done in the city before we could continue, so we didn't enjoy it very much. We did take a day and go to visit the Bloedel Conservatory in Queen Elizabeth park, which was interesting and provided a brief diversion.

Part of the problems we were trying to address in Vancouver were with our communications. I had purchased a new, supposedly unlocked cell phone before leaving, with a view toward getting a pre-paid telephone/Internet plan from a Canadian cell phone company once we were here. There is pretty decent cell coverage along most of our route, and we can still use our US phones, but the roaming rates are usurious, so we couldn't afford to do much. A local plan would have freed us up to check in more frequently while away from marinas.

But it turns out that the phone was not unlocked after all, and would not work with the local SIM card. Nor could any of the many places I visited in Vancouver who deal with that sort of thing unlock it. I didn't have the time or Internet or equipment with me to figure it out myself. I've been in touch with some online places to see if they can get it done. Otherwise, I'm probably out of luck, at least this year. I should be able to unlock it myself when I get back to Seattle.

Without mobile Internet of any sort, we've been even more disconnected from real life than I had planned. We made it from Vancouver to Pender Harbour in one day, spent an extra day there to rest, then spent another long day motoring up Jervis Inlet to Princess Louisa. There, all the rainfall we had cursed in Vancouver proved a boon, since the many, many waterfalls lining the inlet were recharged and streaming at full bore when we arrived. Having done their job, the clouds dispersed as well, and we had two or three very clear, sunny, hot days up there.

Not hot enough to make swimming attractive, unfortunately... the water was still icy. Our knotmeter picked up some of that False Creek crud and wasn't operating properly, and we had read that the water in Princess Louisa gets warm enough to swim in, so it seemed like a good opportunity to dive in and clear it. We sent Mandy first in her wet-suit.

She didn't do any more than jump in and get back out. So, I put a mask on and went in myself, sans-suit. Frigid! It must have taken me a half-hour, in eighty-degree plus sunshine, to warm up again after I got out. But the knotmeter got cleared.

Other than gawk at the scenery, there is not a lot to do up in Princess Louisa. It is beautiful terrain, but steep and there are no reasonable trails to hike, just a small camping area near the base of the main falls. We paddled around in the dinghy quite a lot.

For some reason, when we got there, it was very quiet, despite being the Saturday of Canada Day weekend. We didn't get to anchor in the best possible spot (right in front of the falls) but we had our choice of other spots and picked one near our own, smaller, private waterfall. And it was good that we did; the next day, twelve or more boats came in! The docks were full and the anchorages got squeezed.

Late in the day, the Pacific Grace and Pacific Swift showed up and anchored next to us. They only stayed one night, oddly; but the kids aboard all seemed to have fun. They went in swimming.

We had had to motor all the way up but when we left, there was a good breeze (although right on the nose) and so we sailed some good stretch of the way back down again. It was still a very long day, exacerbated by an unsatisfactory anchorage at our first stop of the evening, Harmony Islands marine park. It was a pretty spot, but the wind funneled through unchecked, the anchorage was deep and rocky and narrow, and any stern-tie points put us broad on the wind. We sat there and had dinner then moved on to an unoccupied and unnamed cove lower in Hotham Sound, where we had a bumpy, but safe night instead.

Now we're at a marina in Powell River, spending a couple nights to do laundry, take on water, go shopping, and catch up with our correspondence. We'll probably duck straight up into Desolation Sound after this. The weather continues to be warm and breezy and sunny, very nice for this time of year.

And that's a good thing... just after we pulled in, I was helping with the lines of another boat that came in after us. They were having some trouble bringing it in, and, just as the captain finally got it drifting in toward the dock, his wife tripped over something on the side deck and fell right in between the boat and the dock. Fortunately, another guy was also down on the dock with me getting the lines, and we each grabbed one arm and pulled. She only lost a shoe. But she said the water wasn't cold at all.