I met a couple of guys who had boats next to us in French Cove, one was from Nanaimo and suggested we try to get a space at the Yacht club there, so I phoned and found out that we could stay there as we were members of another yacht club (RYA & CA), but because we didn’t have a reciprocal agreement we would have to pay $30 a night, which was pretty good, and only a little more expensive than a mooring buoy.
So we untied and headed out of the government harbour to make the short 4 hour passage to Nanaimo. as we turned the dog leg at the exit I shouted to Kathy to get the revs right up, I could see the big waves crashing into the marina entrance and our gentle motoring wasn’t going to get through them. A few minutes later it was like being back in the ocean, 15 knot headwinds with big waves and the bowsprit getting soaked by the waves. I knew the forecast was for strong winds, but this was more than expected and from the wrong direction. We motored south for a while but the wind was building as were the waves and as soon as our speed through water dropped to 3 knots I put up the mainsail with a double reef and 75% staysail and we started to tack our way towards our destination. Now I dropped the revs on the engine right back and we sailed close hauled for the next 5 hours until we reached Nanaimo.
The sky turned black and it started to rain, but just before we arrived the weather moved on, the wind dropped, the sea calmed and into Nanaimo we motored to look for our berth. by the time we tied up the sun was out and I was pleased to be there, but had quite enjoyed the sail.
You can see our planned route in blue, our actual track is in red, not a bad angle on the wind really. There is a dotted/dashed trapezoid shaped box on the chart known as “Area Golf Whisky” This is a military exclusion zone, you can see I tacked over the western end, then across the middle. I could see the Patrol ships on the AIS but they didn’t bother me. I had read somewhere that they only use it on weekdays. It’s used for testing torpedoes, apparently they launch them at one end of the zone towards the other. All along the seabed of the zone they have sensors to record the progress of the torpedos, data is fed back to the base on Ballena island, which we tacked around.
Arriving into the marina down the narrow newcastle strait we had to watch out for seaplanes and ferries that use the area a lot. The seaplanes are very common around here.
The next day (Today Sunday) we took a short ferry ride over to newcastle island, and walked along the nature trails. No sooner had we started the walk than we saw a couple of lovely racoons staring at us.
Next we saw a deer just off the track, which was a releif to me, as I figured the cougar would much prefer deer to human.
The rest of the island was trees and beach, No real sign of it’s industrial past as a big coal mine. 
It is amazing the driftwood you get here on the beach!
In the morning we head south, we need to leave about 09:30 to reach Dodd Narrows with plenty of time before slack water.
Paul Collister
Loved the racoon photo Paul and that sea looked scary xx p.s why do I have to keep putting in my name and email address when posting comments? I didn’t have to before. xx
Thanks Bobbie, as regards the email problem, I can’t see you as a user, I might have accidently deleted you, I get hundreds of spammers registering every month and it’s a pain deleting them, and I might just have caught your email up in the list by mistake. Can you register again, the link is on every page to the register, and let me know how that works out.
P xx
Hi Paul, I did register again and got an email back welcoming me to the site but now as I write this I see that I have to do it again, never mind, when I start to write Bobbie it comes up underneath and the same when I start my email address, its no big deal, maybe it was like that before and I’m just having a senior moment Ha Ha xx .
Their little faces poking out of the trees! So cute 😀