Row, Row, Row Your Boat

Ok its not quite that bad. So, here’s the update on the sail. Last Wednesday we came to an agreement with sailmaker number 1 and new sail number 2. He could not figure out why it was not working and had no further ideas on how to make it work, so he gave us the sail, refunded our money and paid our bill for a week’s stay at the marina while he tried to get it to work. As a vendor I feel he did everything right, except give us a sail that worked, and I feel bad that we had to move to a different supplier but that’s what we did.

Thursday the new, not working, sail and the old original sail were picked up by UK Sails in Sidney. They think they have a few tricks up their sleeves and can make the necessary changes to the new one to make it work. So hopefully later this week we will know. If they can’t, we will take both sails and head north while they make us a new (number 3) main sail that we can pick up when we come back south in August.

Disappointing is the only printable way I can sum up the situation.

In the mean time we have checked out some more of our favourite anchorages on Vancouver Island and in the Gulf Islands.
We spent a week in Sidney on Vancouver Island. Now it is often said that Victoria is the city of the newly wed and nearly dead and if that’s the case then the nearly dead retire to Sidney. I say that in jest as Sidney is a very cute town but how many other places will you see this in the pub parking lot?

And this is the closest thing to a car dealer we saw

Really, it is pretty, and in the summer, they shut 4 or 5 blocks of the main street down on Thursday nights for a farmer’s market that features different entertainers playing at the intersections along with Island farmers goods

We were able to stop and spend some time at Sidney Spit which is a cool Parks Canada marine park.

From there we went to Bedwell Harbour on South Pender Island and the Poets Cove Marina where we spent the May long weekend with about 40 other boats from the Blue Water Cruising Association. It was great to sit with the Doners (the title of those that have cruised to distant shores and returned) and hear their stories and get their advice.
Of course we had to dinghy through Pender Canal and over to Port Browning for ice cream at least once during the weekend.

Its disappointing that the sail is such an issue. We’ve blown our timeline to pieces and will have to reconsider how far north we can get but here’s the reality check. We are on a boat, the weather has been outstanding, and we are in one of the greatest cruising areas on the planet.

Kind of makes the sail issue the epitome of a first world problem.