June 22 – Pender Harbour to Squirrel Cove

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Squirrel Cove Store

Squirrel Cove is located on Cortes Island in Desolation Sound, B.C. There is a small dock and store on the shore, but the anchorage is located beyond. We can use our dinghy to get to the store. When we passed the Squirrel Cove store on our way to the anchorage, it was low tide. It was one of the lowest tides of the year.

Last night when we ran the generator in Pender Harbour, we noticed that the battery monitor indicated we had lost more charge during the afternoon than normal. Also the charging usually starts out in a bulk mode when the batteries are discharged, and this didn’t happen when our charging started. So, now what? Is our battery monitor failing? Or is there a problem with our batteries?

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June 21 – Nanaimo to Pender Harbour

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Pender Harbor Northwest

Garden Bay in Pender Harbour, mainland B. C., looking Northwest. The anchorage was very comfortable and the evening was delightful.

It was calm and overcast with a light drizzle this morning. The forecast for Georgia Strait called for light winds rising to southeast 10-15 later in the morning. We really don’t like to try to cross Georgia Strait in any kind of southeast wind. We have had consistently rough passages crossing Georgia Strait in southeast wind, especially when the wind opposes the current at any point during the crossing. However, we had been in Nanaimo LONG ENOUGH, so we decided to head out toward our Pender Harbour destination and see what the conditions were like.

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June 20 – Still In Nanaimo

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Admiral_of_the_Fleet

One of the colorful statues in the Maffeo Sutton Park along Nanaimo’s Harbourfront Walkway is “Admiral Of The Fleet,” a tribute to ‘Black Frank,’ a prominent Nanaimo community leader, who helped launch the Nanaimo Bathtub Race. A colorful pirate costume was worn to promote the bathtub event.

We ended up staying another day in Nanaimo due to weather. It was rainy, foggy and windy. Not a good time to try to cross Georgia Strait—a 35 mile trip with about 15 miles in open water—and known to be nasty when the wind kicks up. It was a good day to work on inside things…and NOT have to work on the engine! We did some reading, organized some of our supplies, and caught our breath from dealing with the engine issues.

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Moving On

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harbour chandlery

Harbour Chandler in Nanaimo has lots of serious boating and fishing gear.

It took all day, but Jim thinks he finally has enough fluid back in our cooling system so that we can safely run our engine. After he flushed the heat exchanger and reassembled the cooling system, he wasn’t able to get all the fluids back into the system. He thinks this is because he ended up with an air bubble or bubbles in the system when he put things back together.

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In Nanaimo

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nanaimo from walkway

Looking back from the Nanaimo Harbourfront Walkway, the city of Nanaimo sparkles.

We’re on our third day at Port of Nanaimo. Jim finished cleaning out the heat exchanger, but is still in the process of adding the fluids back into the cooling system. He had to remove fluids in order to clean the heat exchanger. After three days in the engine room, he is ready for a break!

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Anacortes to Nanaimo

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phoenix at port of nanaimo

Phoenix tied up on the docks at the Port of Nanaimo.

We arrived in Nanaimo yesterday (Sunday) and are staying here today as well. We’re tied up at Port of Nanaimo, our choice of a place to tie up where Jim can do some work on our engine. We started out across Georgia Strait in the late morning yesterday, thinking we would take advantage of a brief weather window. But after a half hour or so, we noticed that our engine was running a little hot. We decided it would be better to get to a dock and check things out before we made a 15-mile crossing of a large body of water.

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