The Painted Boat--A Lovely Evening Out

Last night we had a lovely dinner at one of our favorite cruising restaurants, the Painted Boat in Pender Harbor. The restaurant is in a resort complex set on a hill above a small cove inside Pender Harbor. We love the setting, and the food is always great. It has a limited, but always interesting, menu. I was picking carefully to keep my stomach on its recovery, so had an Ahi tuna appetizer with an assortment of little dips that was wonderful. Phil had fresh oysters on the half shell, and ate the salad that came with my dish, since greens are something I'm supposed to put it off for a few days. I also had a nice glass of Dry Riesling to go with dinner, my first booze in a week. We topped it off with an unusual dessert--lemon curd mousse, with a caramel sauce. When it came we faced a 4 inch small mound on the plate with a very hard surface. We assumed the mousse had been frozen very hard and thought we would wait for it to soften, since our spoons didnt dent it at all. Finally our waitress helped us out--the mousse is dipped in white chocolate, so we had to break through the white chocolate crust to get at the lemon mousse inside. It was absolutely delicious. It was also Phil's pick, which is an unusual choice for him--he doesn't usually go for things lemon. But he loved it too. Great choice, great dinner, beautiful setting in the hot, evening sun. We sat outside on the deck and could only stand to be there in the heat because we had an umbrella shading us. Imagine!! a hot summer in BC!

I have two pictures here, one of the restaurant and resort complex taken as we approached, and one of Phil seated at our table on the deck. We ended up behind the third umbrella from the left as you look at the first picture.

A great evening!

Anchored in Pender Harbor

We have completed our first major Strait crossing, making our way through Gabriola Pass to leave the Gulf Islands and crossing the Strait of Georgia to the BC mainland coast to get up to Pender Harbor. The wind had been substantial earlier in the morning but was supposed to die around noon, and by the time we got out on the Strait it was down to about 8-10 knots--almost on our nose, of course, so we motored across in lumpy seas. As we got closer to the BC coast, the wind lessened and the water softened a bit so that the last part of the trip wasn't too bad. We made the crossing itself in 4 1/2 hours, and total time under way was nine hours--a long day.

I've had another episode of upset stomach that I've been dealing with the past week and it seems finally to have resolved itself. We will celebrate by having dinner tonight at the Painted Boat in Pender Harbor, one of our favorites. right now we are in shore doing our Internet and shopping. Tomorrow we continue north. We will take two days to get to Lund on Monday, where we will visit with our friends Warren and Barbara Chapman.

Breakfast in Ganges

After what seems like weeks of preparation, painting, scrubbing, waxing, stashing things and dozens of trips up and down the ladder at the boatyard, Tamarisk is in the water and we are in Canada at Ganges, our provisioning stop. We arrived yesterday afternoon at 3:30 to clear customs, and decided to tie up to the public dock to make it easy to get our purchases to the boat. We stocked up on wine and liquor, and then had a lovely dinner at a new restaurant called Aunties Pesto, with a deck overlooking the marina and bay. We will go back to that one.

This morning we are having breakfast at a local bakery. We will stock up on groceries (all those lovely things like fresh vegetables and fruits that you can't bring across the border), get our Canadian cash from the bank here, and be off to find a quiet bay. On Sunday we will move to Parker Island to spend three nights at the dock of our friends, Herb and Karen Berry, having dinner with John Naviaux and Anne Kilkenny, friends who spend the summer on neighboring Wise Island, and also with the Berrys. From there we head north, itinerary not yet determined. The weather has been superb--sunny and highs in the 70's and low 80's. Even wind, though we don't have our big genoa available yet, so we have motored so far.

Ladysmith Log Dump

After leaving Ganges we spent a quiet night at Glenthorne Passage, a long, narrow bay. we then moved to Parker Island to stay three evenings at the dock of our friends Herb and Karen Berry. Again three quiet nights, and over all, sunny and hot days. We had dinner with our friends Jon Navaiux and Anne Kilkenny on neighboring Wise Island, and then cooked dinner for the Berrys on Tuesday evening.

On Wednesday we headed north through the Gulf Islands to end up at the Ladysmith Maritime Museum dock. Ladysmith has a large logging facility, and just as we entered the harbor we encountered a large log barge, about ready to dump its load. It had already flooded its tanks to tip it to one side. I caught this picture just before it unloaded the whole batch with a giant splash. 

Tybee Island Lighthouse

After leaving the Cemetary, and stopping at Wiley's Championship Barbeque for some excellent pulled pork, we drove out to Tybee Island, the "beach escape" for Savannah, to see the dramatic Tybee Lighthouse. The current lighthouse consists of the 60 foot base from the previous lighthouse plus another approx 84 feet added to it to form the present day 144 ft lighthouse. It is quite dramatic, with its black base, mid section of white, and top of black.

Bonaventure Cemetary

On our last day in Savannah we drove outside the city this morning to the 160 acre Bonaventure Cemetary, situated on a bluff above he Wilmington River. It was once a plantation, but became a Cemetary in 1846. Set in a large grove of Live Oaks dripping with Spanish Moss, it contains graves of a few colonists, along with many from the notable families of Savannah. One of the more recent notables is Johnny Mercer, songwriter (Moon River, That Old BLack Magic, You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby) and founder of Capitol Records. It has some lovely headstones, and wandering among them is interesting. Here are pictures of a lane of Live Oak trees, a contemplative young woman on a headstone, and Shana sitting on the Johnny Mercer memorial bench which lists some of his songs.