Saturday, November 26, 2005

We headed off yesterday for about a 10 day trip up towards Desolation Sound, which is north of Vancouver. It rained for most of the day and the winds were light until we came out into the Straits of Georgia, then the wind picked up to 15- 20 knots. We were just trucking along. We had about 5 porpoises playing in our bow wave for half an hour. They are really something, swooping and weaving in and out under the boat and across the bow. The depth sounder picked them up and the shallow alarm went off claiming we were in 5 feet of water. I had a moment of slight panic until Barry said “There’s lots of water out here.” When the porpoises surface you here a bust of air being blown out, it was magical watching them and listening to them as they surfaced. We ended up motoring about 3:30 P.M. to get where we wanted to go before dark. We aren’t keen on entering unknown harbors in the dark.

We woke up this morning to glorious sunshine. The steam was rising off the ocean and the sun was just bouncing of the waves. I had to put my sunglasses on, we haven’t seen the sun for about a week so that was a real treat. We are headed across the Strait of Georgia at the moment; we are planning on staying overnight on Bowen Island. I was a bit chilly so I headed down below and put our wonderful propane heater on and warmed up my hands and feet. What a treat!

Today is my oldest daughter’s birthday. A year ago we headed to Invermere from Yellowknife to surprise her for her 30th. I was just reflecting on how much our lives have changed in the past year. No house, no jobs, a beautiful boat and now we are footloose and fancy free on the Straits of Georgia, doing what we have dreamed of. It’s not quite as warm as I thought it would be, seeing how we were hoping to be somewhere south of California about now, but hey, we are on water that isn’t frozen and we are sailing!! We are hoping to get somewhere to watch the Grey Cup tomorrow. We contemplated buying tickets but decided our budget couldn’t afford it. We bought a GSP receiver for our laptop instead and now have electronic chart mapping. It is a very handy tool, yesterday going into the harbor we just watched on the chart and you could see the icon that was our boat creep past the shallows and make our way through the opening between the rocks into the harbor. It is really slick, thank you so much to those that made that possible. Well I guess I should go up on deck and see if the Captain needs to be spelled off or wants a hot drink!