Blind Channel Resort

Aug 11, 2010
9:30pm

Great trip so far!
We left Gig Harbor on Sunday after spending the weekend attending Amie's 20 year reunion. At 12:30 we put the boat in gear and cleared Customs via phone since we have the NEXUS card. This allowed us to bypass docking and reporting, and with a favorable weather report we zoomed 2.5 hours right up the Strait of Georgia to Welcome Pass and tucked into Garden Bay in Pender Harbour. With more favorable weather we got an early start on Monday and stopped in Lund to provision. Our plan to meet the Alvords, Ericksons and Osterlohs in Pendrell Sound worked great and we all arrived within an hour of each other. Pendrell Sound is positioned so that the water flows equally north and south around Vancouver Island so it gets very little flushing and is 68 degrees warm. There's a picture I'll try to send of Amie and Addie on the bow with snow covered peaks 5000 feet straight up, and 1500 feet deep, you'd never believe the water was so warm.

Our friends all had kids and cousins and Steve put a full day's time running them on innertubes and waterskis around the sound. Addie even got into the act with Jessie Alvord on our tube getting towed by Dad in the Tooth Ferry. Prawning was poor, relaxing was excellent!

In the interest of fishing and spending more time at sites we barely touched last year we left our friends in Pendrell and ran Yulculta, Gillard and Dent rapids to Cordero Channel and Blind Channel Lodge. We are currently tied to a dock here with UNLIMITED WATER! so we all showered the salt off and gave Mental Floss and Tooth Ferry II a good bath. Maren, Lauren and I hit a few kelp beds and came away with a few dusty rockfish, but we all know this battle has just begun...

Just before dinner we took a half hour stroll to the biggest cedar tree imaginable! In fact there are several in a grove not far from the dock, somehow spared the in logging that happened here in 1885 and 1988. The photos don't do these trees justice, the scale is impossible to record without being there. Reports are from 7-800 years old to 1500 years old, I'm certain nobody really knows.

The wind has been howling up north so we're going to delay our ideal plan one more day. By Friday things should smooth out to the point we can be comfortable. Plus it gives us a day to sleep in and explore this area some more. We will leave our dock and the UNLIMITED WATER! and head toward Johnstone Strait, but I really think we will be turned back by the NW wind against the Ebb tide, so will probably anchor in Forward Harbor and wait for Friday's lower winds. Friday will be an early start and our Friday night plan will be determined by how nice Mr. Johnstone is to us and which route we need to pick to get to the Broughton Islands.

Kids are well fed and exhausted from all the water sports and fishing.

Next e-mail report will probably be Sunday or Monday.

:)

RC