Bon Voyage.

Wednesday, May 19 …

Our journey began a day later than planned. Turns out, you can’t provision for a 4-month cruise in two days! That and the fact that the weather was pretty nasty on Tuesday, we decided to wait until Wednesday to leave Blaine. Tuesday eve before we left, Patti & Lincoln joined us onboard Engelenbak for dinner at the Semiahmoo docks.

We fueled up Wednesday morning, topping off our 5,000-gallon tanks with more than 700 gallons of diesel and we pulled out of Blaine around 12:30 p.m. under sunny skies that gradually turned to clouds and rain. We made it to Pender Harbor to clear Canadian customs around 4 p.m. where we were welcomed by a Canadian Navy ship at the docks, with a young crew of sailors who were more than happy to help us with our lines.

Since we all have Nexus cards, we only had to wait 15 minutes to see if anyone wanted to board the boat at customs; no one showed up so we pulled out and motored around the bend and quickly set anchor in Bedwell Harbour where we watched the wind build to close to 40 knots … with waves to match.