Hey there everyone, how are you? My Mom and her friend Bill are here for a visit. We took them for a sail the day after they arrived. It was an absolutely gorgeous day, sunny, warm, and windy. You could see Mount Baker all day and the winds picked up a bit during the day so we had to put a reef in on the way back. The dahl porpoises found us and followed the boat and played in the wake for over half an hour, there were about 10 of them. Mom got a bit cold even though we had her in a floater suit, so she would go down below and warm up by the furnace.

We have been busy since Mom and Bill arrived. We have taken them for a driving trip around the Saanich Peninsula one day and then the next day we went to Royal Roads University and had a tour of Hatley Castle. Then we went to Fort Rodd Hill, which is a national park, and saw gun batteries that were built in 1895. The guns were upgraded during the Second World War and then decommissioned in 1956. Today we headed over to Saltspring Island and toured all around that island. We ended on top of Mount Maxwell and it was a terrific view of the narrows between Saltspring Island and Vancouver Island. We are planning a trip to the Empress Hotel to imbibe in the thoroughly British tradition of high tea.

We also took off a day of sight seeing to go to the Vancouver Boat Show. We ended up buying an EPIRB (Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon) at the show as well as a life raft. (Notice the nice tan on my face in the picture that was taken at the boat show. That is from the lovely sail we had with Bill and Mom.) That should complete all our major purchases before heading offshore. There are some minor things 0we have to take care off, like imagining what would happen if our boat was upside down and fastening down everything that would be flung around. It actually feels like we are making progress, oh yeah, I forgot about the holding tank, it is going to put in next week (that will be a huge mess).