Archive for 'Ports'
The Cheap Sailor’s Port Guide to Vancouver
Vancouver is a wonderful and cosmopolitan city, and False Creek, the reformed industrial waterway bordering the south edge of the downtown core, is an interesting anchorage right at its heart. Prominent location of both Expo ’86 and important parts of the more recent 2010 Olympics, False Creek has a checkered history that is slowly being [...]
Full StoryNeighbors
We have never spent enough time in our slip to really get to know our neighbors. The fellow on the other side of our finger pier has been the only constant. Until this week, I’d never before seen anyone on the boat that shares our slip. Every other time we have come back to the [...]
Full StoryWhat’s up with Nanaimo?
Nanaimo is a regular stop for us pretty much any time we are going anywhere in or through the Strait of Georgia. It’s the natural jumping off point for slow boats heading either north or east, and it’s a well-protected and easily entered anchorage for anyone coming back toward the Gulf Islands from those directions. [...]
Full StoryHome is where the slip is
Actually I am a bit confused lately about where home is; the boat is home, of course, and we carry her with us (or the other way around, rather) just about everywhere. But it does seem to matter where it is that we keep her, so home can variously seem like a mooring ball, a [...]
Full StorySurprise, Surprise
It’s not exactly the highest compliment that one can pay one’s own navigational abilities to admit surprise at finding oneself in a port, or indeed an entire country, where one had not intended to be at the beginning of the day’s journey. Nonetheless, I stand here before you to admit that I am vaguely surprised [...]
Full StorySwans and Warships
Swans and warships are incongruous companions in an anchorage, but that’s what we have here in Ganges right now. Apparently the late season in cruising brings out all the oddballs, ourselves warmly included. Contrary to type, the young naval trainees from the three or four Orca class training boats that come in and tie up [...]
Full StoryPlaces you sail past: Whytecliff Park
You’ve sailed past this lovely little park if you have dodged the ferry traffic out of Horseshoe Bay on your way to or from destinations deeper in Howe Sound, north of Vancouver. You may have noticed a large and distinctive white rock, jutting six stories out of the water, forming an island joined by a [...]
Full StoryDependency
We’ve been noticing an odd thing these past few years as we have been out sailing: the actual sailing part is the easiest thing. What is hard is stopping in a port for any length of time. There are usually different reasons for our difficulties in any particular port of call, and we have come [...]
Full StoryAt anchor
As much fun as sailing can be, it’s also pretty nice to take a few days off and just sit someplace, anchored out and watching the world go by. It’s necessary, of course, to pick some place where the world actually goes by; sheltered anchorages with a small opening out into a well-trafficked channel are [...]
Full StorySolitude is where you find it
We left Blind Channel to bash through the ceaseless northwest winds and swells that have been rolling implacably down Johnstone Strait every day for a month under clear blue skies. Word on the docks was that today was the day for those heading further north; max winds of 25 knots rather than 35 made for [...]
Full Story
Marty McOmber
Scott Wilson