While I (as usual) have lots of posts yet to do, we are presently homeward bound. Deb and our friends, Ron and Diane, left from Campbell River yesterday around noon. They are spending a day in Vancouver before heading home.
Steve and I spent the day de- entropying the boat and doing all the laundry at Discovery Harbour in Campbell River. A quick night out at the Riptide Restaurant (very good) and it was off to bed for a 0730 departure for Nanaimo – an 8 hour run.
We are now totally spoiled – 8 hour or longer runs between anchorages has been our norm over 20,000 plus nautical miles. In BC, however, flat seas, always in sight of land, no need for flopper stoppers and good anchorages and marinas just around the bend has us soft – Steve’s travails in a circumnavigation of Antarctica later this year will really toughen him up in short order.
Tomorrow we are off to Port Sidney on Vancouver Island. Wonderful place where I think we might keep the boat for the winter – change of plans. Jim – our winter caretaker for Iron Lady is enroute from Japan and he will arrive here the 22nd of August.
On August 23 or 24, Iron Lady will get a well deserved rest on the hard stand at Canoe Cove Marina in Port Sidney. There she will be hauled out and get a fresh coat of bottom paint, a full set of new zincs, a mod to our shaft seal and cutlass bearings, a rebuild of our Spurs line cutter system as well as a few more things.
Iron Lady was great to us this year with few issues. After more then 23,000 miles at sea over the past 4 years, we all understand each other and we get along great!
It is both happy and sad that we are headed home. We love the boat but miss our friends and loved ones. It has been wonderful that our daughter Kim and her friend Daria joined us again this year. It was very special that our good friends Ron and Diane Lane joined us as well. It was most memorable that our son George and his fiancé, Gel got engaged in French Polynesia while with us last year.
Iron Lady has been a memorable and very special part of our lives – she has been our companion and magic carpet thru all our journeys and I will be sad to leave her but she will be in capable hands and anxiously awaiting next year.
At the end of next season, it will be time to get ready for our new FPB78-3. More on that later but Iron Lady is ready and waiting for more adventures – she will always take good care of those aboard. As Captain Steve says, “I would take her anywhere” – and that is from a guy who has seen it all from 70 north to 70 south.
Cheers