I’m Sorry Sir

Saturday July 21st – Today we are leaving windy Howe Sound to trek up the Georgia Strait to Pender Harbor. We called two different marinas in Pender Harbor, both didn’t answer after repeated attempts. Finally, one of them answered and took our reservation for moorage that night. It’s about a 40nm run and the weather was not great. Forecast is for calming wind in the afternoon, so we hung out at our anchorage in Howe Sound for more favorable conditions. They never came.

So, we left our anchorage in 15 knots of wind and headed for the entrance to Howe Sound that would take us to the Georgia Strait. Not too bad to start but as we entered the Georgia Strait we had wind against current combined with the tidal flow from Howe Sound created some large steep waves. The boat got rocked around really good but this time we were prepared with everything put away and lunch already taken down. I told Julie and Ava to sit their butts in the pilot house and look up the whole time. They did, and that helped keep the sea sickness to a minimum. The boat took it on the nose like a champ, but it was unsettling as the boat plowed through the waves then what felt like a freefall off the other side. We spent about 2 hours in the real snotty stuff then conditions improved a little for the remainder of the trip.

With an extremely salty boat, we pulled into Painted Boat Marina hoping to make it to the grocery store before they closed. When I made the reservation they never gave us a slip assignment, so I called them on the phone. The guy on the other end took my name and boat name, then there was silence on the other end as he was obviously trying to locate my reservation. “I’m sorry sir but we don’t have a reservation for you” he said. “I just talked to a guy this morning and made the reservation” I said. Again, there was silence on the other end then he said, “did you give a credit card or get a confirmation email”? “No, they never asked for that information” I said getting a little more frustrated. “Well, I’m sorry sir but we don’t have your reservation and we do not have any room for you”. In a slightly more stern voice, I told him I was really frustrated because I just made the reservation this morning. Again, he said, “I’m sorry sir but we don’t have room, I hope you can find a place”. I hung up the phone and instantly realized I was the idiot trying to dock at the wrong marina! During my multiple calls to two different marinas in Pender Harbor I thought I was talking to Painted Boat but actually I made reservations at Garden Bay. Silly me.

Garden Bay took us right in, but the grocery store is across the bay, so we quickly got the dinghy down to get to the store before they closed. Loaded up with pizza for dinner and a full basket of groceries we dinghied back for a late dinner on the boat after a long day.

But it wasn’t over. At 1am the band that was playing at the Garden Bay Pub decided to extend the party on a small boat right in front of ours. It all started with Mama Mia blasting as loud as the stereo would go and then just kept going for another couple hours. 6am departure is going to be tough.

Sunday July 22nd. 6am the alarm goes off. After not much sleep due to the Mama Mia party boat, Julie and I got up and stumbled through the coffee brewing process. 6:30am we fired up the engine for the long run to Pendrell Sound in Desolation Sound.

Finally, some smooth water! The run was beautiful all the way into Desolation. Some friends of ours were already up in the area and we are going to meet them in Pendrell. We arrived first, anchored and stern tied in an area perfect for swimming.

Pendrell Sound has some of the warmest waters in the area. We measured 72-74 degrees and clear all the way down to about 30’. If I didn’t know any better, you would think we were in Hawaii. In this long inlet the water is 1,300 feet deep and the mountains shoot straight up. It’s absolutely amazing!

We settled in and brought out all the water toys. New this year is a 5’X15’ inflatable dock that we planned on tying off to the swim step to extend our swimming pleasure. Its big and took some work to get blown up, but once in the water it provided a super fun platform to swim off of.

Our friends arrived and rafted up to us. We all swam in the heat and enjoyed the warm waters of Pendrell.