With Canada Day mid-week this year, we had decided to spend the whole week on Galiano. Our friend David, who has been gracious enough in the past to take us out on his boat suggested that we do the Canada Day Lamb BBQ on Saturna Island again - but with a twist! We’d leave Tuesday night and “camp” on the boat!
As both Justine and I were working on Tuesday, David was picking us up around 6 pm from the park dock in Montague Harbour. I managed to get wrapped up a bit early, so we headed down and parked the truck in the day use lot parking. From there we lugged all our gear down to the boat, to get organized for our tour.
The plan was to leave from Montague and head over to Prevost Island, one of the smaller of the Gulf Islands. David knew of a place where we could cast anchor for the night, in a safe, sheltered location. David’s son Jack had joined us, and we were looking forward to the cruise. The weather was calm and everything looked great. Prevost was about 45 minutes away, and the plan was to motor over, drop anchor and make dinner while we had daylight left.
After we set the anchor, we opened a beer and enjoyed the calm, clear evening. It was a team exercise as first we had some cheese and crackers as an appi, while David worked on our dinner of pork roast and baked potatoes. It was all pretty gourmet. While we had dinner, we were able to use David’s Starlink to stream the World Cup match, watching Mexico defeated Ecuador 2-0. It was a pretty great game, made even more fun by the fact that David’s daughter was in Mexico for a wedding, and she kept sending us videos of the craziness. She looked like she was having a grand time.
While our evening was a little more sedate, we were also having an amazing time. Dinner turned out great and we had the most serine, beautiful views of the Gulf Islands laid out in front of us. We were facing almost due west, so we had an amazing view of the sunset!
After getting dinner cleaned up and everything sorted away, we played some cards and enjoyed the evening. It was after 11:00 by the time we got sorted for bed. David had been kind enough to offer us the better of the bunks, tucked away under the helm station. It was not a cramped as I had feared, and we had a good night in calm waters.
We got up around 8:00 the next morning, and woke to an amazing blue sky - Happy Canada Day! The spot we were sitting in was just as lovely the next morning, as it was when we called it a night. The tide had gone out a little bit, explosing more of the shoreline. This lead to some photo opps…
It was a great morning, looking out over the shoreline.
As usual, I was the first one up. Trying to let everyone else sleep, I headed out to the back deck of the boat and just enjoyed the amazing morning. I had my camera with me, and as usual, just sitting and watching usually results in a payoff. And today was no different. You could hear them long before you saw them, but there were a pair of kingfishers chasing each other all around the shore line. I only got the one, not very good photo as they stayed quite far away.
A little later, there was a raccoon doing proper wild raccoony things along the shore line. He was digging clams, flipping over rocks and generally having a lovely morning looking for breakfast.
But the highlight was definitely the river otter that was swimming about, fishing and generally having a great time. He was out there for a good hour, not far off the boat and put on a great show.
Before too long, everyone got up and sorted with breakfast and such. We got the boat organized and breakfast dishes cleaned up, and it was time to continue our journey. Sleeping on the boat was nice - I see the appeal. As we headed back out of the inlet, there was a couple of bald eagles in the trees. Always nice to see. The trip to Saturna was about another 45 minutes - quite easy and again we were blessed with great weather and calm seas.
Even with it being mid-week, the place was busy. There were lots of boats tied off in the harbour. Some people take their dinghies into the dock, but there are also volunteer “taxis” - small boats that will come around and pick up up and take you to the dock.
David and Jack wanted to make sure that the boat was securely anchored and sent us ahead on a taxi to secure our tickets for the lamb BBQ. We thought we were early, but we still ended up with a ticket in the 800s, which meant we would not be eating until about 3:00!
David and Jack finished up their boat duties and brought their dinghy to the dock. We came down to meet them and help carry back the mini tent, blanket and chairs that we had brought to make the wait more enjoyable. There are a few activities going on, some booths to check out and a raffle to enter (for a boat that we did not win, sadly). The weather was lovely - not as hot as the last time which had been almost unbearable. The place where they set-up is a bit of a heat sink, with no shade to be found.
Finally, at long last they started calling numbers. Going up in groups of about 100 seemed painfully slow, but actually it went pretty smoothly. We were towards the end but there was still plenty of lamb to be had (even if they did run out of cookies!).
After having our delicious meal and hanging out for a while longer, it was time to call it a day. We wanted to make sure there was lost of daylight left for the trip back to Galiano and to do so while the seas were still calm. It had been a fabulous day - but sadly Justine and I had to work in the morning.
About half way back between Saturna and Montague Harbour on Galiano.
The trip back was a wonderful motor back through the Gulf Islands and back to Montague. David and Jack were staying the night there, before heading home the next day. We had enjoyed our mini vacation, “camping” on the boat and hanging out with Jack and David. The Saturna Lamb BBQ is always a fun event, and we’ll likely do it again next year!
The Rest of the Week On Galiano
As mentioned, we had to work Thursday and Friday, which was a bit of a bummer. But Friday was a holiday in the US, so it was a very quiet day. It meant I got a fair bit of work done.
Friday night we invited our neighbors Dana and David to have dinner and hang out. Tova (David’s wife) had abandoned us for the mainland and put us in charge of entertaining him. We hadn’t seen Dana in months so it seemed like a good time to catch up.
We had a very summer dinner of burgers and salads, and lots to drink. Probably too much, by the fact that we went late into the night and probably made way too much noise! Sorry Jerry and Madeline! We don’t do it often, so hopefully they will forgive us. We had a grand time chatting and catching up and managed to get a game of scrabble in as well.
We were headed home on Sunday afternoon, so Saturday was the last day to get anything done. There were lots of projects on the list and we knocked some of them off. We also had time to play cornhole and bocce, so not all work. Saturday night Dana invited a few people over for drinks after dinner. Ross and Sophia join our little crew from the night before, but it was a much more subdued evening - none of us could tie it on like that two night in a row. Besides, Ross talked us into going mountain biking in the morning.
It had been ages since we had ridden the mountain bikes and it showed. My skills were really rusty and neither of us had much in the way of courage to ride some of the trickier parts. Ross is a machine and he showed us up - he does have a lot more experience with these trails, especially since he built many of them.
It had been a pretty epic week, with lots of fun times, new adventures, old favorites and lots of time hanging out with the people we like the most. Sadly, Sunday afternoon came too fast and it was time to head home and back to reality.