Lyn's Log, 10th May 2008
Vancouver, British Columbia

Vancouver, BC.
N49º16', W123º08'
16,838 miles.

It had taken a long time, but Andrew eventually got an appointment with a top consultant in Vancouver for 29th April. So it was time to leave Sidney. We met Richard again, who was the first person we met when we arrived at Sidney last year, and also had a very pleasant evening with new friends Neal and Debbie who contacted us after reading my Yachting Monthly piece on the Amazon. They used to live in Sandwich in Kent. It turned out that Debbie’s father had sailed from Vancouver to Australia and back twenty years ago, and they kindly gave us all his old charts of the Pacific, which will be invaluable when we cross.

Waving goodbye to Nancy and Tony from Moondancer we left Port Sidney on Thursday 24th April. It was a lovely sail across the Haro Straight to San Juan Island in the USA, with a brisk wind to bowl us nicely along. US customs there issued our new one-year cruising permit for the States. The next morning we left early for Anacortes but with no wind, we motored all the way. The bank cashed the cheque on our closed account with no trouble, not even bothering to check my ID!

Saturday was another sunny day but without wind, so we motored to Point Roberts, our last stop in the USA. A gale was forecast for the next day, but once again we had to motor all the way to Vancouver. By late morning the drizzle set in and it just got wetter as the day wore on. As we passed the mouth of the Frazer River we spotted a great many seals and could hear their barks. In Vancouver we entered False Creek, right in the centre of the city, where we got a slip in Fisherman’s Wharf, next to Granville Island (pic). We were surrounded by fishing boats, but the price is reasonable and there was even free wifi. It was also close for Andrew to walk to the hospital, where after umming and ahhing for two hours the consultant declared his progress satisfactory.

In Vancouver we have explored Granville Island and its wonderful fresh-food market, then walked to the nearby Maritime Museum which houses the St Roch, a ship designed for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to patrol around the northern coast of Canada and its Arctic islands. Back in 1942 she became only the second ship ever to sail through the notorious North-West Passage. We have visited the famous classical Chinese garden of Dr Sun Yat-Sen, in downtown Chinatown, and the Capilano suspension footbridge in the rainforest to the north of Vancouver. We took Andrew's cousin Penny's daughter Louise and husband Larry out for a meal on Granville Island. They had won a luxury cruise to Alaska in a raffle and were excited about leaving shortly. Then we took ourselves off on a four-day coach tour of some of the best places in the Rockies, which is related elsewhere. We met Penny again when she visited Vancouver to see off Louise and Larry, and all went to the Science Museum, which turned out to be very much geared to children, but still had a few things to amuse us. One memorable boozy evening was spent in company with Thor, the guy living on the fishing boat moored next to us. It's no longer a real fishing-boat, prettified it gets hired out as a prop in film sets from time to time. An artist in metalwork, he has had some interesting commissions locally. A day was spent replacing our VHF aerial cable which had become rotten up the mast, and then we were ready to set off northwards hoping summer would continue.