Philadelphia to Nanaimo

Today is a travel day. We awoke at 3:15AM in order to catch a 6:30 flight from Philadelphia to Toronto. There we cleared customs, and waited for our next Air Canada flight to Vancouver. Our third and last flight is from Vancouver to Nanaimo. Karen waits for our ride to Nanaimo at the Vancouver airport

Our ride to Nananaimo

Fortunately, the weather and airline equipment cooperated and everything ran on time.

By 1:30PM Pacific Daylight Savings Time, we gathered our 200 pounds of gear and piled into a Budget rental car. Our plan is to spend the night in Nanaimo, reset our body clocks and then start out tomorrow on our four-hour drive to Port McNeill.

Dinner was at our favorite spot, Penny’s Palapas. This floating restaurant is located in the Nanaimo harbour. It serves the freshest food and the halibut tacos are not to be missed.

Bob at Penny's

We discovered a great bookstore a few steps from our hotel. They specialize in Canadian and especially British Columbia local and nautical books and charts.

Sidney Harbour

Day two of our exile in mechanical trouble land. Although I awoke early in anticipation of the mechanics being at the boat early, answer in hand, it did not transpire according to my optimistic timetable. I held my ground until 10AM when I called Frank, the boss, to see what the plan was. They were in the process of constructing some special hoses to allow them to try a couple of bypass workarounds. Also, they had sent the computer print outs to those who can decipher them. They hoped that the mechanics would be down later in the morning once the hoses were complete. Since they encouraged us to entertain ourselves by enjoying Sidney, (not an encouraging sign from our perspective) we acquiesced given that we were sick of looking at the inside of Arctic Star. Sidney is a town of ten bookstores, all within a few blocks of the docks. So off to browse the bookshelves we went. Sidney is indeed a great town of bookstores with anything you can imagine available within a ten minute walk. After buying some new reading material we stopped at Fish on 5th for lunch.

Turns out that this little, unimposing restaurant, knows its fish. I had halibut and chips (yam fries instead of white potatoes) and Karen enjoyed a fish taco. We both left satisfied.

Fish on the 5th...Yummy

As we walked back to the boat, we ran into Nigel pushing his wheelbarrow full of tools, diesel fuel soaked rags and the offending part. Today’s trouble shooting was fruitful and the offending part was a stuck check valve in the primer pump. Nigel was heading back to the shop to see if he had a replacement part. It was about 1PM now so we strolled back to Arctic Star via a circuitous route up and down the finger piers checking out the myriad of boats docked in Sidney harbor. Big, small, old, new and everything in between was laid out for our perusal. We often talk about the size of the tides in this part of the world. In Sidney harbour the impact of the wide tidal range is driven home at the back of the harbour. The tidal mud flats cover and uncover with dramatic effect.

High Tide

Low Tide

Around 2:30 Nigel returned with a brand new primer pump in hand. About a half hour later Nigel had the engine running and happy.

It was too late to cast off, especially given our destination and the forecast winds. So a celebration dinner was the plan, and we walked a few blocks to the Thai restaurant. Nothing fancy, but very popular and some say the best restaurant in Sidney. We enjoyed our dinner, followed by some ice cream aboard Arctic Star and early to bed. Tomorrow, we bid fond farewell to Sidney and return to our vacation.

Sidney Harbour Marina

Well, what can I say? Today we’re in Sidney to have the mechanics try to get the port engine back up and running. Nigel, from Vector Marine Services, came on board this morning to work his magic. He methodically worked though all the fuel related trouble shooting procedures: Changed fuel filters, changed fuel sources, blew out all the fuel lines. All efforts were to no avail.

Nigel in the engine room tending to the reluctant engine

Mid-afternoon Nigel went back to the shop to fetch “the computer”. These engines have a moderate degree of computer control. Not as much as the current crop of engines, but they do have the ability to have a computer attached to them to run diagnostics.

Nigel returned with the computer and “the Boss”, Frank. They hooked up the cables and the laptop and began a series of tests. At the end of the day they left with the computer and a promise to come back in the morning after they had analyzed the information they gathered.

Frank "listening" to the engine with the laptop

Having spent all day on the boat with the mechanics, we decided to get out for dinner and found a Greek restaurant, Pier One, just up the street. Not bad. We watched Chris Matthews’ tribute to Tim Russert and went to bed, fingers crossed that tomorrow will see the port engine running again.

Princess Bay to Sidney Harbour

This is a day without a schedule until we have to leave for Sidney Harbour to meet up with the engine mechanic tomorrow morning.

Princess Bay panorama

Our big event for the day was to walk around the island. Of course, we did not determine in advance just how long a journey it might be.

Karen waiting for Bob to start our hike

So off we went. The trail was very nice; well worn and recently cut back. We walked about one third of the way around the island until we came to the “Kayakers beach”. This is an idyllic location for Kayakers to overnight and set up a base camp. There were at least three tents pitched but no sign of any Kayakers

After a brief rest we continued on, but could not find the continuation of the trail. We walked up and down a few promising looking paths, but none gave us the confidence to continue on.

We found our way back to the picnic benches on “Kayakers beach” and enjoyed three cookies each.

Cookie break

After our snack, we retraced our steps and made our way back to the boat. We unstuck the anchor to make our five mile passage to Sidney Harbour.

Arctic Star at Anchor in Princess Bay

The marina staff was very nice to fill our request for an end T-dock that would be easier for us to approach given our reduced maneuverability.

The areas adjacent the Harbour itself have undergone a fair amount of building and is much nicer than we remember it, some five years hence.

We walked the docks to do some boat snooping and finished up with a beer at the new Georgia hotel near the docks.

Ganges Harbour to Princess Bay, Portland Island

The first mission of the day was to go to the famous “Saturday Market” in Ganges. In fact, this was the only “hard date” we had in our itinerary because we had never been able to time a visit to this famous event.  

  

 A very small part of the Saturday Market at Ganges

The city’s park is overtaken with vendors selling their art, crafts, food and most anything else. Karen was able to find some very unique earrings and we a great “walking breakfast” as we worked our way along the rows of tents. We started out in a group with Anne, Doug, Bart and Jan, but we all dispersed to look at various items of interest. There was an amazing array of fresh cheeses, breads, rolls and organic produce. Too bad we didn’t really need anything!

 

Ganges Harbour panorama

Bart and Jan's dog, Bear, says goodbye

Back at the docks we took on some water and shoved off for Princess Bay. I know this name may seem familiar to readers of this blog, but Princess Bay is a very popular name with this version being found on Portland Island.

En route to Princess Bay

Our typical view as we travel to the Gulf Islands

As we were about three quarters of the way to our destination, the port engine lost RPM’s and eventually shut down. I went into the engine room and finding nothing obviously wrong, I called Northwest Explorations for advice. We, along with added advice from their engine expert, ran through a series of trouble shooting procedures. However, success was not to be had. Therefore, our plan is to arrive at Sidney Sunday night and have the Caterpillar dealer look at the problem first thing Monday.

So, on we went on one engine to Princess Bay. A small but very popular spot, we tucked in along with about another ten boats. We may spend most of the day here tomorrow, exploring the water at low tide in our kayaks and enjoying some of the hiking trails on the island. It’s a nice place, though very shallow at the head, and apparently quite popular with the Sidney crowd, being a scant five miles away.

Karen sat at the bow on a deck chair for hours, snooping with her binoculars, scoring anchoring attempts, and following eagles as they swooped and soared. It was a lovely and clear afternoon, and we took advantage of it!

Karen cannot resist a good snoop