Port San Juan, Sooke, Cadboro Bay & Sidney Spit

Our strategic retreat went: Barkley to Port San Juan arriving at dark and leaving first thing in the morning, Port San Juan to Sooke arriving in the afternoon, enjoying the sunset and a lazy morning and then leaving for two nights at the Royal Victoria Yacht Club in Cadboro Bay and another night at anchor, a night at anchor at Sidney Spit to enjoy before we headed to a dock for a few months*.

Here we are after living and traveling together for 3 months on a 35 foot boat. Yes, we still like each other --->

If the low pressure system hadn’t been chasing us, we were going to do a day hike on part of the famous West Coast Trail while we were at Port San Juan but that wasn’t to be.

Sooke was surprisingly beautiful by boat. We anchored just off the spit and I thought “why haven’t we been here before”. Again, we didn’t make it onshore to walk on the park because we were moving fast.

The Royal Victoria Yacht Club was very fun. Everyone was friendly, the beers at the club house were relatively cheap and we were excited to splurge on lattes, italian deli and groceries at Peppers. Plus, we got to entertain good friends at the yacht club as if we had paid the big bucks to join. Finally, they were having races while we were there so we anchored in Cadboro Bay and watched children and adults round the buoys with various levels of skill (not always correlated with age).


 

We had a lovely last night enjoying the sunset and having a nice dinner at Sidney Spit. Sidney Spit is just outside of Sidney where we lived for a time while preparing to cruise and is a favorite quick get away for local boats. There is a hiking path and, of course, a long sandy spit that nearly disappears at very high tides. Here is a photo from our flight up Vancouver Island.

This won’t be the first time I express this here, but it was difficult not to feel like this was the end of our “cruising” because we will do so much less travel by boat this winter, much more travel by land, and also because for at least the next few months our boat will be “back home” or at least in the same city as before if not the same exact location. If we were spending the hurricane season in a foreign port I wouldn’t be feeling the same way. Even though we are planning exciting trips, some to exotic locations, there was a feeling of loss and transition for me during our night at Sidney Spit.

It’s a good thing we have a boatwork to do list a mile long to keep our minds off such things…and we didn’t have time to mull on anything because just as our vagabonding took a pause, we were backyard-less again. More on that soon.

*except that didn’t work out and we were booted back onto the water again scrambling for a new backyard.