July 6 – At Montague Harbour

Montague calm morning

It was glassy calm and sunny at Montague in the morning.

Montague Marina calm

From where we were anchored, the marina and other nearby boats presented us with wonderful reflections in the glassy calm water.

Since our focus on this short-distance cruise is on relaxation and enjoying some time out on the boat we decided to spend a second night at Montague. This morning was calm and sunny, and it stayed nice most of the day…except for a moderate southerly breeze that filled in during the afternoon, but laid down by nightfall.

It was a good morning to take care of some small projects on the boat. In the early afternoon, we launched the dinghy (still enjoying the ease of that operation with the new electric winch!), and motored over to the dinghy dock at Montague Harbour Provincial Park (http://www.env.gov.bc.ca/bcparks/explore/parkpgs/montague/). We were anchored at the south end of the anchorage, and the park with its mooring buoys is located at the north end.

Montague Park Dock

We tied up our dinghy among other dinghies at the Montague Park dock. From the dock, it’s a short walk to the park trails.

Montague Park beach low tide

Looking back from the start of the beach trail at Montague Harbour Park, lots of the beach is visible at low tide. Notice several empty mooring buoys.

We found the moorage rates were unchanged from last year, and the trail still looks good. However, after our experience with all the mud at Reid Harbor, we decided to forgo the Montague hike today, and instead walked over to the north-facing beach of the park, and walked along the beach at low tide.

Montague North Beach

Exposed rock at low tide on the north beach at Montague Harbour Park. This is looking north on Trincomali Channel.

alice and jim north beach montague

The crew of Phoenix enjoys a short walk at Montague. Lots of rock showing at low tide on the north beach.

Then we motored over to the Montague Harbour Marina to visit the small store. Had a very difficult time finding a dinghy dock, but finally found a dinghy dock posted for use by visitors to the store. It was along the side of the dock-side end of the ramp, on the south side.

The store and modest restaurant haven’t changed much. They offer a minimum amount of supplies, but still have a very good selection of local B.C. books. We found two Dreamspeaker guides (http://www.dreamspeakerguides.com/) to add to our collection. While we were in the Broughton Archipelago last year, we met some fellow cruisers who had the Dreamspeaker guide for the Broughtons, and it looked like a good addition to our boating library. We have since acquired more of their guides, and enjoy having the additional references along.

While we were at the store, we noticed a sign for ice cream cones…so we treated ourselves to hard ice cream in waffle cones. Very tasty!

We barbecued chicken and had chicken Caesar salads for dinner, enjoying the typical rosy sunset at Montague.

Montague sunset 07_06_12

The sun sets at Montague Harbor, Galiano Island, B. C.