The Migration North

We cast loose our lines in Eagle Harbor before 6 AM on Wednesday, April 27, for our sixth trip to SE Alaska in the last seven years.  There is a familiarity to the preparation but also an edge of paranoia.  You just know in your heart that complacency in preparation or operation can easily lead to calamity.

Our first night was in Garrison Bay on the northwest corner of San Juan Island just south of the Roche Harbor.  It provided us quick access the next morning to the Port of Sidney on Vancouver Island where we cleared Canadian Customs.  We have Nexus cards which speed our passage through customs.  After a phone call and waiting 15 minutes to allow a customs officer to show up to inspect us should they want to, we were on our way.

It had been three years since our last visit to Butchart Gardens so for our second night we anchored in Tod Inlet near the Butchart Gardens.  We dropped our dinghy and motored over to the dock down the hill from the Japanese Gardens.  Reportedly the tulips were past prime but if they were, we didn’t notice.

As I write this, we are tied to the dock at Salt Springs Marina in Ganges Harbour.  Our yacht club has leases dock space as an outstation here so it is inexpensive moorage as we do some light provisioning for those items that are prohibited from being brought in.

Our plans for this season are pretty similar to prior years.  We’ll move north pretty directly to SE Alaska arriving around the middle of May.  We’ll stay in Alaska for about 2-1/2 months until the end of July/first part of August when we’ll begin the slower journey south.  Arrival in Puget Sound will be the middle of September.