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Voyages

Our kids rowing around Port of Sidney Marina, summer 2009.

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Silva Bay on Gabriola Island, summer 2009

Ganges Marina on Saltspring Island, summer 2009

Aaakwaaard...Two boats, one Canadian, one American, same name, same typeface...too funny.

A good day for crabbin'!
Our youngest daughter (left) and her pal.
Our daughter's friend moved here recently from Manitoba, this weekend was her first small boat ride on the ocean, and her first time cleaning, cooking and eating a crab.

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For the July 1st long weekend we moored at Snug Cove on Bowen Island for their usual Canada Day festivities then headed over to Centre Bay Yacht Station for three more days.
Centre Bay is a member owned facility that we had to wait almost five years to join, limited to one hundred shareholders, its' sort of an anti yacht club club and it makes for a nice quiet get-away.

By the time we had arrived, the floats were getting busy, one of the members brought Seaward. (left)
Seaward, apart from being a gorgeous piece of work, also has a pretty interesting history.
Originally fitted with three Merlin engines in 1942 she was built as one of one hundred high speed rescue craft used to retrieve pilots that had been shot down over The English Channel during World War 2.
Capable of reaching speeds of over 45mph, shes' a flat bottomed, 72 foot long wood planing hull.
After being decommissioned her entire superstructure was removed and she was superbly refitted as a private yacht, no longer looking like a PT boat.
Unfortunately she no longer sports the triple Merlins but is fitted with twin GM diesels for more sedate cruising.

That compass looking thingy in front of the wheel is Seaward's autopilot.
A much prettier unit than my digital readout!

Now this is an engine room!
That door out back leads to a separate workshop.

You think you've got a lot of teak to maintain on your Grand Banks???
This thing has acres of it, and its all flawless.

Four steps down from the pilothouse and aft salon, is as nice a galley and main salon as you'd find in a high end condo, note the vintage gas range.
Forward of this, there's a spiral staircase that leads down to the guest staterooms with ensuite heads and the laundry room....freakin' schweet!

As if Seaward's owner wasn't kind enough to let us invade their privacy for a privare tour,
later that afternoon he shared his crab catch with us.

On our way home from a five day weekend.
My oldest daughter and her boyfriend on the aft deck.

We met up with my ex sister-in-law and her new husband in Sidney.
They have a high-end yacht piloting and maintenance service.
At the time of our visit they were taking care of a couple of 100+ foot privately owned Burger yachts.
As impressive as these boats were, what really threw me was the fact that both are owned by the same individual, a film producer that shall be un-named.
By some quirk of scheduling it just so happened that both his east coast and west coast yachts both ended up in the Pacific Northwest at the same time... The rich really are different.

We met up with our friends Geoff and Terry, they took us over to Poet's Cove in their new Cobalt 290 for dinner at about 50mph.
Geoff is an ex drag boat racer, I've been with him in his other boat travelling in excess of 100mph...pretty scary.

Getting ready to launch for a high speed dinner run to Poet's Cove.

In the summer months Sidney shuts down the main street every
Thursday at 5pm for a really good farmer's market and craft fair.
Here the girls are waiting in line for some temporary tattoos
....real classy.

We accidentally stumbled into a way to get the girls to wash the dishes without complaining.
Throw some disco on the stereo and they turn it into a dance / dishwashing party.
Real disco... from the 70s...who knew?
Maybe I should dig out the old mirror ball from our basement and see what that will do.

This was the first year we were able to attend the Centre Bay Yacht Station Labour Day fesivities as members.
The party spans three days with horseshoe and bacci competitions, a blind dinghy race and culminates in a pig roast on the beach.

My oldest daughter and I dominated in the blind dinghy race, only to get our asses handed to us by a couple of 13 year old girls in the final heat.
There was a suggestion that maybe there was some cheating involved in our defeat, but seeing as this was all in fun I let it slide.
Not until the awards ceremony the next day did I find out that top prize in the race was a pair of private box seat tickets to a Vancouver Canucks game!!!

The rules briefing at the horseshoe tournament.

Yours truly about to blow any chance of our team's success in the bacci competition..

A great tournout for the evening pig roast and post dinner cocktail party and bonfire.

Enroute to Desolation Sound we were handily passed by Lazee Gal, one of the prettiest classics ever built in Vancouver.
We met up with her again during a stopover at Poet's Cove Resort on Pender Island.
Owned by the Dueck family she's a magazine cover-girl thats' been meticulously cared for since built.
For a virtual tour of Lazee Gal click here.

Another gorgeous classic docked two slips up from Lazee Gal.

Its' not often that you see classics like this in saltwater.
Tick Tock was spotted gassing up in Pender Harbour.
I'm going to take a few minutes now to wipe the drool off my keyboard.

Change of Heart tied up at Secret Cove on B.C.'s Sunshine Coast (left),
and at anchor in Bucaneer Bay on Thormanby Island ( below).

Amazing white sand beaches at Thormanby Island; the water was bathwater warm.
I hadn't visited here since I was a kid on my dad's Chris Craft.
It was a real treat to give my kids this experience.

I really should take my sandals off more often.

One of the members at Centre Bay is the proud owner (and he should be) of New Venture.
New Venture was built as a seiner fishing boat by Matsumoto Shipyards along Dollarton Highway in North Vancouver. She now plies the waters of the British Columbia coastline as a private yacht.

The huge net roller that previously occupied the aft deck of New Venture has been replaced with a massive sundeck.

Hard to believe the space now utilised for the main salon was once a smelly fish locker.

All the comforts of home including an electrically lifted flatscreen that hides in it's own custom cacinet when not in use.

This things got a killer galley with quartz countertops and the original diesel stove which also serves as a cabin heat source.

New Venture still has all her net rigging which makes for a terrific rope swing.

Photos really don't come anywhere close to showing the warmth and craftsmanship of this old boat's interior.
This view is lookin aft towards the aft deck doors.