Since we last wrote in the blog, several good vibes and rewards presented themselves and we snatched them up. Of course there a couple of small stoic challenges too.

When we last blogged, we were planning to take a couple of days and cruise up to April Point where we planned to leave the True Love for a Seaplane flight to Seattle for the opening of Dick’s Drive-Ins’ 9th restaurant (in Federal Way) and marching alongside the DDIR Food Truck in the annual Seafair Parade in downtown Seattle.

But, first we stopped in Pender Harbour to check out a property that might give us an opportunity to secure a permanent dock space near our favorite places in the Sunshine Coast of BC. We were talking to people and just “putting it out into the universe” that we wanted dock space somewhere in the general vicinity of Pender Harbour or Egmont (which are both on the north side of the Sechelt Peninsula, which is northwest of Vancouver). As you know Princess Louisa Inlet is our favorite area and we were looking for a summer home that would give us easy access to PLI and also give us a place that we can dock for a break, make repairs, and even take a seaplane back to Seattle for a few weeks. But finding dock space in the summer for a 60’ boat is extremely challenging.

The property we looked at was interesting, and certainly a good long term investment opportunity, but a very, very, big project. And we are not looking for any more big projects.

After looking at the property I suggested we take the tender across the harbour to the newly rebuilt John Henry’s Marina (which looked like it had just reopened) and see if there was long term space open there. And there was! We really couldn’t believe it. Alan, the marina manager, was our hero. As soon as he made sure the True Love wasn’t some derelict old nightmare, Alan said we could have the last 60’ slip there. Within 24 hours we finished the paper work and its now a done deal.

With that wish granted, we called the Painted Boat Resort & Spa to see if could luck into a couple of massages for the next day, including before/after time at the wonderful spa pool. Next wish granted!

But not so fast . . . The next morning we slept in and planned to head over to the spa early, but our generator stalled out again. Oh NO! Are You Kidding Me! Deep Breath.

We were in a fairly shallow spot so I hoped it was just that the sea strainer (that brings seawater into the boat to cool the generator) had clogged up. I took off my spa hat and put my ship’s engineer hat back on. I also texted all the support team in case this “easy” fix didn’t work. And we texted Alan at John Henry’s to see if we could get our slip earlier than we planned so that we could leave the True Love there instead of at April Point (50 miles north).

The sea strainer was icky with green algae. But when I cleaned the strainer and then opened the ‘through hull” valve to let sea water flow into the generator, no water flowed in at all. Okay. Deep breath. It must be clogged underneath the boat. Rather than swim under the boat and try to clean the intake by hand, the Captain and I decided to quickly lift the anchor and head out into the main channel to hopefully dislodge the clog by cruising (briefly) at the True Love’s top speed (about 14 knots).

We were once again on the clock. Massages awaited us. And it was really windy outside of Pender Harbour. As we headed out in the choppy waves and spray I noticed a really menacing “dead head” on our port side. A log the size of a telephone pole floated vertically, with just the top few inches showing. Hitting this thing could cause catastrophic problems to hulls or damage rudders or propellers. Thankfully we did not hit it, but we felt we had to contact the coast guard and report it so that someone else could come out and tow it into shore or at least mark it with a flag. The Coast Guard asked us if we had something to mark it. Now let me paint the picture for you: Waves, spray, log bouncing up and down in the 2 feet swells, 5 feet below the boat, about 50 yards from a rocky shore. How are we supposed to mark it? We don’t have a harpoon with a blow up marker. But we had done our duty to warn other boaters of the danger (which the coast guard did with a warning over the VHF radio), so we returned to the task at hand.

Now it was time to test the generator again. Fingers crossed. It worked! Whatever was clogging the seawater intake was gone. So we quickly returned to Pender Harbour, and again dropped our anchor, but this time in deeper water. We then quickly deployed the tender and headed to the dock at the Painted Boat Resort, walked up the hill and made it to our massages with 10 minutes to spare!

In the meantime, our hero, Alan, texted us that he cleared a space for us at the docks for the next 4 nights, plus the three weeks we needed to store the boat while we flew back to Seattle. This meant we did not have to spend two days each way getting to April Point to store the boat and then, 3 weeks later, retrace our route back to the Pender Harbour & Egmont area to meet up with Jasmine, David and the kids in mid August. It also meant we could just relax at the dock, kayak and breathe deeply for the next 4 days.

And that is exactly what we did. We met new friends in Pender Harbour, kayaked, enjoyed watching the giant yacht, used up our supplies with good meals, slept in, did our yoga and didn’t stress.

Last Tuesday, Kenmore Air picked us up at the John Henry Docks and flew us to Seattle on a 5 passenger “Beaver” seaplane. David and Jasmine left us our car at the “air harbor” on the north end of Lake Washington so that we could more easily drive up to the mountains and rest up for the Federal Way restaurant launch activities.

Federal Way Opening, Fair Start Golf Tournament and Seafair Parade!

We knew we would be busy and we were. First the “soft opening” for the contractors who built the Federal Way restaurant on Wednesday afternoon and evening. Then the Grand Opening for the public on Thursday morning. Friday we drove down to Seattle for absolutely needed haircuts before helping Jasmine and the team deliver burgers at the Fare Start Charity Golf Tournament at the Newcastle Golf Course. Then on Saturday we marched with the Dick’s Drive-Ins’ Food Truck, other family members and the support team in the Seafair Torchlight Parade in downtown Seattle.

In my young life, I was in parades on horse back and when I ran for the WA Legislature I was in many small-town summer parades. This is the first time DDIR participated in the annual Seafair Parade. The Food Truck makes a perfect float. The organizing team (Jasmine, Chelsy, Lena, Ron, Ryan and others) did a great job planning everything. It was a kick. One of Lena’s children asked “is this what it’s like to be famous?” We sure felt like celebrities! People along the parade route smiled and cheered for us as we walked by, handing out little gifts. We were even able to hand out burgers at one designated spot. Technically, we had 90 seconds to hand out 200 burgers at the main grandstands. They were all gone in under a minute! The Captain walked almost the entire route and then another mile back to the car.

Of course things break in houses too. The sink in our new, very pretty laundry room came with a broken faucet. We figured we could easily install it. Not so fast, said the universe! It took way, way longer than we thought it would, but partly because of installer errors, but also because the designer of the sink faucet was a sadistic monster. But, we eventually resolved this stoic challenge like all the other before it and the new laundry room looks so pretty.

This week we drive north on Wednesday to the Semi-ah-moo Resort at the US/Canada border for our 4th Annual DDIR Family Assembly Retreat. We are just participants now, so it should be much easier (for us) than in previous years. After that we have a week to just enjoy the mountains, get some appointments done and then fly back to the True Love for the end of our summer boating adventure. We’ll blog again when we are back in Canada. Until then, thank you for reading!

Enjoy the hummingbirds from the mountains. They are all swarming and feeding before they head south. If this year is like the years before, all of the hummingbirds will have left the mountains for warmer climates by August 15th.