July 10, 2013 ~ Ganges to Princess Bay

It was time to head out to our next destination, but first I went up to Mouat’s to get that fishing/crabbing license before I forgot about it again.  Turns out that buying the license there is the same as buying it online – they just set you down in front of their computer and have you enter all your info, including a credit card, of course.  The caveat, of course, is that after paying for the license, salmon sticker and tax, they charge you $5.60 for the privilege of using their printer to print the one page license.  Oh well, enterprise rules.

While I was off doing that, Erin was digging out our waffle iron.  Since we were still plugged in to shore power, we had some blueberry waffles for breakfast.  After that it was up to the marina office a few blocks away to dump our garbage and make another attempt to pay for last night’s moorage.  The sign said open, but the door was locked.  Last night it was locked one time, and the other time a maintenance guy was there who didn’t do paperwork, said they were at the dock with their clipboard.  Oh well, we’ll probably give them more business on our way south.  We left town at about noon.

We decided we’d try an anchorage we hadn’t been to, and where I was last in the late 70’s – North Cove on the north side of Thetis Island.  It’s a bit open, but with the weather pattern we’re having it’ll be fine.  Well, about an hour out of Ganges, that port engine started running hot again.  After my success with the washing machine, and failing to reproduce the overheat condition in the previous days, I hadn’t torn into the raw water pump to replace its impeller.  Rather than continue on to North Cove, we headed for a closer anchorage, Princess Bay on Wallace Island, a long time favorite where we’ve stayed many times.  I thought I’d change the impeller in the cool of the morning, but after reviewing the slack current times for Dodd Narrows, I think we’ll just press on to Nanaimo.  Slack is a few minutes after noon tomorrow, and again near 7:30pm.  We’re just a couple hours away from the narrows here, and it’s another 45 minutes to an hour into Nanaimo - doable even if it’s with one engine.  Hopefully we can get to the bottom of the problem there.

We got into Princess Bay around 2:30, and Erin fixed us some mid-day snack plates that looked so good I took pictures.  We had sliced barbecued pork, radishes, yellow and red peppers, whole wheat crackers, almonds, a bowl of grapes and blueberries, and a cheese stick.  We didn’t really need any dinner after that – just a few bites of leftovers later in the evening.

The sunsets are always gorgeous here at Princess Bay, and this evening wasn’t any different.