Update from Campbell River, Vancouver Island, BC

We woke up this morning to a beautiful blue sky, showing no signs of drizzle in the near future. We are on the docks at the Discovery Harbour in Campbell River, which is a great place to provision, as the shops are quite close to the harbour. They also have laundry services and restrooms right on the docks.

Tomorrow we'll leave Campbell River, continuing to move further north as fast as the weather will permit. Our plans are flexible, but we are looking at nearterm stops in: Shoal Bay, Lagoon Cove, Port McNeil, Port Hardy, and most likely Blunden Harbour. After that, we just know the stops will be further north and timing is weather dependant. But for now the weather looks quite good.

Following is an update on what we've been up to, since our last blog update:

Overall, we've been focused on moving north, but have enjoyed cruising very much. Weather on a typical day has pretty much been half day of grey clouds with on again, off again, drizzle, with the other half of the day quite sunny. Frequently, the best time of the day has been between 3pm-7pm, when the sun comes out. Temperatures have been 45-65...with one day we hit 70.

• Sunday, May 25th - departed Anacortes, WA. Before departing we purchased 120 galls of fuel @$4.75/gal. An obvious sign that this adventure was going to be big$$$ Note: In our previous cruise north we departed Anacortes on June 25th. We're finding that so far, the weather has been much nicer than our previous cruise.
  
• Monday, May 26th - Blind Bay, Shaw Island. Anchored: Lat: 48 34.672N Long: 122.56.163W
• Tuesday, May 27th - Prevost Harbor, Stuart Island. Anchored: Lat 48 40.67N Long 123.11.685W Enjoyed our hike to Turn Point Light House. Met some young college students from Illinois. They were spending the summer on Stuart Island researching whales, and they were living at the local school house in exchange for some work at the school. They'd been on the island 10 days and had not yet seen a whale. We also met a Park Ranger who lives on the island in the summertime, and winters in Floriday. His wife is a native of Stuart Island. He said everyone on the island is related!
• Wednesday, May 28th - Tseshum Harbour, Vancouver Island. Cleared Canadian customs at Van Islae (in the rain) and tied up at a guest slip at Sidney North Saanich Yacht Club (SNSYC). Caugt a bus into Sidney and had fun walking around the town. Bought some tasty pastries at a local bakery, before catching the bus back to SNSYC. While on the docks at SNSYC we met a lovely couple (Cliff &Orma Bowering, on Skylark, a Seabird 37 from Port Moody, BC) that is also sailing north, to Alaska,but will be departing a few weeks after us. They are master mariners, having spent 7 years cruising in Venezuela! We are hoping to see them again this summer, as we both have cruise north.
  
• Thursday, May 29th - Comox, Vancouver Island. Anchored. Enjoyed watching Jr. Sailing (CYC) in the Comox Bay in late afternoon. Sun was shining down and the water replets looked beautiful. The mountain peaks also still had snow too!
• Friday, May 31st - Campbell River, Vancouver Island
• Saturday, June lst - " " " "

While we could have stayed only one day in Campbell River, with laundry, shopping and a few minor things Brad needs to do on the boat, we felt it would be better to have two days. One of Brad's projects is to debug why we are not getting as many AMP Hours into our batteries, when we run our engines, as we should. Yesterday he tested the alternator, spoke with the manufacturer, as well as took it to a local shop for further testing. All tests have confirmed the alternator is working fine, so he will do more investigation on the boat today to determine what is causing the problem. Other than that issue, the boat and us are all doing quite well. We're anxious to get to Alaska.

Please feel free to email us and we'll respond when we can. Or you can call us on Brad's cell. You'll most likely get VM if we are running the engines. And if you wish to send snail mail, y ou can mail us: General Delivery, Brad & Darlene Simmons, Ketchikan Post Office, 3609 Tongass Avenue, Ketchikan, AK 99901 This general delivery address should work for us thru the end of July, but not certain how much later.

Photos from Prevost Harbor:



Here are some photos of Sidney North Saanich (SNSYC) and Sidney: