Nanaimo

Monday offered a typical forecast of a calm morning with rising afternoon winds, and we wanted to get across the Strait of Georgia, so left Pender Harbor at 6:30 as soon as it was light enough to see. The view was distinctly different depending which direction you looked as the next 3 photos show, all taken within 2 minutes:

Unlike Sunday in Malaspina Strait, winds never surpassed 10 knots nor waves above 0.5 meters. Four hours later we pulled into Nanaimo, a great provisioning stop: easy walking distance to groceries, liquor store, chandlery, and a hardware store.

Bob was able to get a new propane hose, valve and fitting as the original brass fitting had cracked, jettisoning all our propane and leaving us without use of the stove and oven for 3 days (choice: grill or microwave?)

For some reason they parked us on the "Big Boys' Dock" where Phoenix was dwarfed by the $7.2 million dollar boat "Polar Bear" for sale across from us. 

We got a SPOT satellite message from friends Aaron and Julie on "Eight Bells" showing they were nearby, so we texted back and forth, agreeing to meet at an anchorage in Montague the next day. And we got most of our preparations completed for the next set of visitors arriving Friday morning.