Day 6: Everything is Up from Sea Level

July 5^th:  Nanaimo to Garden Bay, Pender Harbour, off Mainland BC

Short sleeve weather.  Yipeeee!  The warm weather was due in part to no wind, so we motored all day.

9:30 am departure, 4:30 pm arrival…. Long time for ~30 miles… though we did waylay in between and got swept back a mile or more while we did.  Pender Harbour is long, with several fingers.  Puttering slowly to not create a wake (waves whose rocking disrupts other boaters), it took us a while to find our place to anchor.  We dropped anchor well inside, in the area known as Garden Bay.  We were welcomed by a pair of bald eagles, circling.

Our sailboat is one of those little
white dots toward the right.

Paddled our dinghy over to the Garden Bay Provincial Park and walked over to the Garden Bay Marina, and noticed posters for a “Meet Draw.” The gal at the John Henry store seemed surprised when I asked what that was. She said who it was a fund raiser for (the local youth paddling club) but not what it was…. I had to ask several times but was finally able to piece it together – a raffle for meat.  She probably just thought I was dense.  We paddled back to the boat and tried paddling down another finger of the bay, “GunBoat,” but the strong current discouraged us.  Good call; we later found the current there gets up to 8 knots.  About 15 feet from our dinghy we saw a piece of wood that looked a bit like a sea lion head. When that “piece of wood” suddenly dove back down we realized it was a sea lion.  We paddled over to the Pender Bay Marina, and walked up, and I do mean UP a 45 degree incline, to the Grasshopper, winded.  

Velvety antlered deer at Pender Harbour

We meandered down on the other side at more leisurely pace down that slope to the other local marina.  Down slope to our boat, we came across a family of deer, male “Dad” with velvety antlers, female “Mom” and “junior” happily chomping away.  

Dinner was my camping classic, easy chicken curry: chicken flavored rice mix, with chicken breast, curry, pineapple, fresh ginger and green onions added.