Well it is it the start of week 3 of cruising and we are still hanging in the south. We had a great time at Pender. Really enjoyed seeing our friends Robin and Lorine. They have a million dollar view on the southern tip of the island… great food, company and wine!
After Bedwell we heading to Ganges Harbour at Saltspring Island. We anchored out in the bay and used the dinghy to get back and forth. We needed to stock up on groceries.. OMG is Thrifty’s there expensive! Great selection but pricey. Just as we were leaving we found out about a free shuttle for boaters to the Upper Ganges Market… will use that next time as they have a great deli and prices are better. Thank goodness our dinghy is so stable and easy to use…we loaded her up to the max as we needed many staples as well as fresh meat/produce. The goal was for the galley slave to have enough to last until Nanaimo on June 3rd. There was extensive meal planning and a comprehensive list before we went ashore. Fortunately Cariba has both a fridge and a freezer and with our new solar panels and batteries, we are able to stock up well.
Ganges hasn’t changed much but we do find that going ashore involves spending more cash there now than in years gone by…It is much cheaper to stay on the boat! We ate a couple of meals out.. the Tree House Café was good but I would give the new Taco place a miss .. not worth the money for sure. But we do enjoy sitting at TJ Beans for coffee and the people watching is epic! There must be a specific dress code that is distributed to you when you move to Saltspring. There is definitely a ‘style’ here that is different from anywhere else! Gauze, tie-dye, loose cotton and wild colors along with the most interesting “head dressings” I have ever seen. Makes the 60’s look tame. But along with the relaxed dress code there is a atmosphere of peace and most people are engaging, happy and look to be enjoying life….. Maybe I need some tie-dyed gauze pants too!
The anchorage in Ganges has some major pluses and minuses… Plus would be easy access to shore/groceries and amazing WIFI!. We have a Wirie Pro wifi booster and I could pick up Shaw Open and live stream Shaw on Demand.. and yes Mum I did see the final episode of Designated Survivor! The major drawback to Ganges is the wake from lots of boats and noise/wake from the seaplanes. Not a biggie but gets tiring after a few days.
So where are we now… well yesterday we did a long long sail…lol 90 mins only back to Montague Harbour on Galiano Island. We had an awesome sail out of Ganges – we were doing 6.5 knots upwind with only staysail and reefed main. As the wind eased we pulled out the Yankee and kept at 6+ knots. It always amazes me how when the winds are so good that many people still motor their sailboats. There was a large 50 ft Hunter whose name was BLUE BY YOU…. Well they were motoring and we BLEW BY THEM!!! Lol while under sail with big grins on our faces. The sailing continued to be good right across Trincomali and we came down the channel into Montague and anchored under sail again… we are getting good at this!
So today has been clean the boat, a short hike, fetching water (you can get it from the marine park) and now we are contemplating put out the crab trap. We didn’t have great luck crabbing last year but have a new trap to try out. Also someone suggested using oysters for bait so stay tuned to see how that works…
SV Cariba 