The fleet is in

If you look closely in the photo above you can see us tucked into the line of fishing boats tied up on D-dock at Fisherman’s Wharf between the Granville and Burrard bridges.  You couldn’t ask for much nicer real estate in Vancouver as far as I’m concerned.  The yellow building in the background is “Bridges” restaurant on Granville Island.  My eagle eyed eldest son named it instantly when I sent him a cell phone picture immediately after we arrived. 

We didn’t get quite as early a start from Sidney as I would have liked to.  Bed felt too good at 6:00 and neither of us was anxious to get out.  It was still twilight when we exited the breakwater at Van Isle but we could have been on the water at least a half an hour earlier.  That became important when we hit Active Pass. 

Active Pass separates Mayne from Galliano Islands and it is appropriately named.  All those little swirly things and the things that look like arrows fleched on only one side mean that the pass is full of rips and tidal currents.  We would have had to be there around 7:30 local (9:30 ship time) in order to hit slack water.  That would have meant about a 5:30 local departure or maybe even earlier and sunrise was at 7:33 local so 5:30 simply wasn’t going to happen.  No doubt we will run in the dark someday but we aren’t ready yet and certainly not in an area that is polluted with BC ferries.  The Swartz Bay ferry terminal is within walking distance from Van Isle and at that hour of the morning the ferries are running hard to get the commuters on and off the island. 

The effect of all that was that we hit Active Pass against about a 2 knot current.  Now 2 knots doesn’t sound like much but when your normal cruising speed is 7 knots, 2 knots is a pretty big deal.  We lollygagged into the west entrance of the pass but the currents and eddies were pushing us around pretty forcefully so I shoved the throttles up past 2200 – as fast as we have ever pushed them as a matter of fact – and we cleared the pass in about a half an hour.  Then we made a leisurely run up the west side of the traffic separation lanes until we were clearly going to cross entirely in Canadian waters before we headed east toward the mouth of the Fraser River. 

The main excuse for this trip is to attend the Vancouver Boat Show so our location in False Creek is ideal.  The floating portion of the show is just across the way on the south side of downtown.  This afternoon shortly after we arrived we walked around to Granville Island, found our favorite seafood merchant and bought some of their wonderful crabcakes for supper.  I can smell them warming up right now.  They also had fresh clams so my world famous clam linguine is on the menu for sometime tomorrow.   And tomorrow night there’s a free celestial navigation seminar at West Marine.  It doesn’t get much better than this.