Michelle and Andrew are great friends of ours. I’ve been friends with Michelle for over a decade, we just get each other. We find the same things funny, which is namely, each other. Andrew and Michelle joined us for an amazing weekend of sailing before they made a big move from Vancouver to Prince George. Needless to say, the weekend was a dream.
We sailed from Vancouver to Gambier Island and anchored at Port Graves on Saturday. There was a strong wind that day and Georgia Strait had kicked up in normal fashion, with moderate waves close together. Andrew was unlucky with seasickness so we tucked ourselves between Paisley Island and Bowen Island, which cut down the wind and thankfully the chop. A quick dip in the ocean and a beer and we were set straight.
We sailed right into the middle of a massive algae bloom and the colour of the ocean was an incredible bright chalky green colour. Apparently, it was coccolithophorids which have tiny calcium-carbonate scales that reflect the light. It’s completely safe to swim and made us feel like we were sailing somewhere far off and exotic. The reggae helped with that too.
We anchored at Port Graves for the first time and found our new favourite anchorage on Gambier. It’s massive with tons of room for anchoring. We chilled, had a few beers, BBQ’d, hammocked and enjoyed a beautiful evening.
Sunday was a gorgeous sail back to Vancouver. We tacked the entire way out of Port Graves, which must have been about 18 tacks to get 1.5KN. We were a great team! It was so nice having people onboard who love sailing, and these two do. We started dreaming up a sailing trip to Hawaii in 2020.
We zipped back to Vancouver with a great wind and weren’t quite finished sailing, so we poured ourselves a final cocktail and sailed around in English Bay for another hour to delay our return. That’s how you know it was a great weekend.
