7/4 Westscott Bay to Ganges

Happy Independence Day everyone! We celebrated by gathering (well, Trav did the gathering this morning) 7 more crabs. There were only two in the pot with the catfish heads as bait – I guess I won't use those again.

We left Westscott Bay a little after 9 o'clock in the morning, heading out Mosquito Pass and through Roche Harbor. There were many boats at anchor there as there will be a fireworks display in the evening. It's a real zoo, and we continued on towards Canada.

Trav followed our lead as we headed across Spieden Channel towards Johns Pass, a dog leg passageway between Stuart and Johns Islands. It's a shortcut we've taken many times on the way to Bedwell Harbour. We crabbed against a 4 knot current as we crossed the channel, but after transiting Johns Pass and turning towards Bedwell, we had the current with us.

We arrived at the Canadian Customs dock about an hour later, and neither of us had any problems reporting in. We both received our clearance numbers and were off the dock again in a matter of minutes.

Our usual route from here is to pass between North and South Pender Islands via the channel at Shark Cove. It's a shallow passage and since we were at a minus tide we headed back out the conventional way. Another couple hours of sightseeing brought us to Ganges Harbor, where we are anchored for the night.

The wind was blowing quite a bit as we anchored, and we ended up anchored on opposite sides of a small island. We launched our dinghy for a ride into town, and Barb accompanied us while Trav stayed aboard to tend to business there. On shore we visited the hardware, liquor and grocery stores for an assortment of things to bring back. Our return ride in the dinghy was headed into the wind and waves, and even quartering the waves we ended up with some wet passengers. We dropped Barb off with her supplies and since we were banging around pretty good we decided to forego some social time aboard the Bar-T-Na and head back home. We had a couple of the crabs from this morning's catch on board, and they became our dinner.

It's now high tide and about 8 o'clock in the evening and the wind and seas have settled right down. I fired up the computer to check on good times for our passage of Dodd Narrows to Nanaimo for either tomorrow or the next day, and surprisingly enough, out here in the middle of the harbor, I picked up an unrestricted Internet connection. I uploaded the last two days entries in our journal onto the Blog, and if the connection holds I'll send this one too. Pictures may come later.

Tomorrow is Saturday, and in Ganges that means the Saturday Market - we may make an excursion into town to see that.