We left the docks at Nanaimo just before 6:00 a.m. for the long cruise north to Campbell River (about 75nm). The forecast for the Strait of Georgia was quite good, so we figured we’d skip our planned stop in Comox and have a long (but hopefully calm) day on the Strait of Georgia. The downside to the calm conditions is smoke. Visibility was about one mile most of the day. At least it made for a few cool photos!
A few hours out of Nanaimo, we found a group of three (or five) humpbacks and stopped to watch them for a bit. This was the most exciting thing that happened all day, and that’s a good thing! The Strait of Georgia can be a truly nasty body of water, and we all appreciated the calm—glassy even—conditions, even if it was a little boring.
The second most exciting thing that happened today was that Jim and Joyce on Billywig (Elling 48) had a little bird hitchhike a ride on their bow rail for half an hour or so. They sent us these photos of their little boat-pool buddy:
We arrived in Campbell River just after 4:00 p.m. and docked at Discovery Harbour Marina. We ran into friends Hans and Terri on Mellow Moments and caught up with them for a bit before meeting the group for dinner at the Riptide Marine Pub. The food was really good, and we had a fun evening sharing stories about how boring and gray today’s cruise was (well, except for the two minutes of humpbacks, and maybe the little bird). On a boat, we all agreed, we prefer boredom to terror!
After dinner, we walked over to the mega-market here and grabbed a few more things for tomorrow night’s dinner (taco night!) and Laura stopped (as she does) to make some parking lot art. This is the reflection of some shrubs on a white-painted speed bump:
Not a lot of photos today, since it mostly just looked like this:
Today’s Route: 75.4 nautical miles, 10 hours 27 minutes
Flotilla Total: 122.6 nautical miles, 17 hours 14 minutes
