Canada

6 weeks in Canada, both on and off Vancouver Island has flown by and now we're back to the next stage of our immigration plans. Gadgetman's TB testing has resulted in a negative result as we thought it would and he has been back to have a further x-ray taken. This has been sent back to the Canadian High Commission and hopefully the next contact will be a request from them to send our passports in for shiny visas to be inserted.

Our summer on Vancouver Island was spent mainly out amongst the islands sailing something.........

My happy brother Graham.....
with a flotilla of boats moored together at some stages. We even saw a grey whale......

....this time which caused much early morning excitement all round. It only surfaced about three times so it was difficult to tell where to aim the camera to get a good shot. This was about the best of the lot, showing the last of the tail as it dove. Then it was gone, and although we turned around to follow it's path, it didn't surface for about 2.5 minutes and was just too far away to get a good shot.
Raccoons...... pitter-pattered along the decks at night whilst moored at the dock at Newcastle Island, bald eagles soared overheard at many anchorages, seals poked their heads up inquisitively as we sailed or motored along, and we saw lots of loons, pilliated woodpeckers, cormorants and herons amongst other birds. The kids caught us crabs for dinner...... Graham, my brother, set prawn traps as well, and also went off to remote rocks in the dinghy to collect oysters, which he prepared and cooked in garlic and butter. Absolutely scrummy. This was dinner one evening....

....and Graham's feet for perspective!

We experienced some aaaaaah-type sunsets......


We met quite a few 'live-aboards' and friends of my brother and his wife who also cruise amongst the islands during the summer and had many an evening in the cockpit involving alcohol and singing.

The kids and I stayed up late on the 12th August for the Perseid meteor showers, allegedly 200 could be seen in 4 hours but 20 in an hr was enough for me and thrilling for us all. There was no moon and we were anchored off Herriot Bay on Quadra Island, (near the green bit in this photo), so light density was very low. What a great experience that was.

The day before we set off sailing we spent the day at The Filberg Festival in Comox, an annual arts and crafts show/festival. I had a moving and serendipitous meeting there with an artist called Monk. She paints and teaches for a living and lives on Vancouver Island at Rathtrevor beach. She was an amazing presence and we spent about an hour there with her talking and watching her paint. Before leaving I decided that I was going to buy one of paintings that had been printed. I profered the $50 for payment but she refused payment, saying that she felt so fortunate to have met us that she wanted me to have the painting with her love. I was moved to tears and we hugged. What a powerful and emotional encounter we had though difficult to describe here.

We had THE most fun water balloon fight of all times between 3 boats whilst enroute from one anchorage to another. Hundreds of water balloons were prepared in advance.....then it was game ON....
as attack after attack took place......

Gman & Gadgeteen left us soon after and headed back up island for a few days 'on dry land' and Gadgetgirlie and I sailed on back up north home with the others. GG usually stayed on the larger boat and I had whoever would crew with me for the day. Our last stop was at a beautiful anchorage called Codfish bay on Jedediah Island and this is our flotilla..... On the left is the hobiecat with the rubber dinghy on top and Berceau's dinghy tied by the stern, then Berceau, (I'm getting the charts out for the days sail), then Moku Lana, then my other brother, Pete's best friend's boat. On deck Moku Lana has another sailing dinghy...... ......3 kayaks, and a surfboard.

Here's the family photo taken that day, minus Gman & Gteen of course.....

I know......I know....this has turned out to be quite a lengthy post and I have stayed up far too late but I really wanted to post something and am also having trouble uploading photos onto Facebook.