Sidney to Nanaimo

The theme for the last week was rain. It was raining hard while we packed up and left Sidney, and it rained some every day on the paddle to Nanaimo. The first day in the rain was beautiful. The water was flat chrome reflecting the low clouds, and the rain and cool weather didn’t bother us at all. It took us a while to pack the boats, so we didn’t get on the water until around noon. We paddled through the islands outside Sidney up to Prevost Island.

From Prevost Island we wanted to go up to Pirates Cove, but we were low on water. The water on Prevost didn’t look good, and a group of kayakers told us the water on Wallace Island wasn’t good, so we had to go to Montague Harbor on Galiano Island to get water. When we got there, it turned out the water at the marina wasn’t good either, so we had to buy water. While we were there, we figured we might as well have lunch. By the time we got back on the water it was almost 4:00 PM. We paddled another 8 miles from there to Wallace Island to camp.

The campsite on Wallace was a beautiful spot above a cove. Lil’ bit found a squeaky ball at the Montague Harbor Marina, and got to squeak and chase the ball around until it was lost between some rocks. He was very upset at the loss. We had dinner and enjoyed the evening, but after we went to bed the rain poured down. We had over 1/2 an inch of rain in our cook pot when we got up.

We paddled from Wallace Island to Pirates Cove the next day. A large weather system followed just south of us all day, but never caught up. Every time we looked back you could see the mountains seeping into the dense clouds and rain. We weaved in and out of the islands to avoid the current and the moderate breeze.

It ended up taking most of the day to make it to Pirates Cove on the De Courcy group. The rain held off until almost dark. After we went to bed, the campsite was attacked by a platoon of raccoons. We did our best to scare them off, but they came back again and again, reaching right under the rain fly of the tent looking for the good stuff. We ended up having to move pretty much everything into the tent to keep them away. We haven’t gotten into bear territory yet, so we haven’t started hanging our food, but I guess we’ll have to do something to keep the raccoons away.

The last day was an easy paddle and some sailing to Nanaimo. We got to a campsite across from town in the early afternoon, but had to haul our gear a couple hundred yards across low tide to a campsite. When we were done we caught a ferry into town and did some laundry and pigged out on Mexican food.

We’re going to continue on today towards Powell River. It should take about a week to get there, depending on the weather.