Greywolf’s Chronicles: Chronicle 2 Friday Harbor to Sidney

Back in Friday Harbor....

.....Greywolf inspected the underside of her anchor.

Doug and Allie spend a fair amount of time waiting for me outside of

various ice cream shops.

Have you seen this before? We’d hadn’t seen this before. Take-out pizza must be very popular in Friday Harbor. I’m wondering if someone is just trying to keep the boxes out of a landfill, or actually has a use for them. We're trying to imagine what that might be. Ideas? An appropriate prize (take-out pizza) awaits the winning entry.

Greywolf returned to Prevost Harbor on Stuart Island, where her crew enjoyed leisurely days of doing the same thing they had done with Etta: not much of anything.

Well, there was that one trail that Doug assumed I had chosen in order to collect the insurance money. Spectacular views, but one slip on the steep dusty path and you’d be in Reid Harbor far below. These people are in their 70’s and no longer have all of their original joints. They’ll be looking for the AARP Approved Geriatric Trails publication. The dog enjoyed it.

When the trail was not life-threatening, we get to enjoy the environment, not just stare at the toes of our shoes. Doug spotted this Ant Destruction/Construction site.

I hope you can see Jack The Carpenter Ant in the middle left of the photo. Look for his grain of sawdust. He is carrying his 132th tiny granule of the day (and it was only 1 PM). Hanging over the edge of the fungus, he’s ready to drop his granule to the pile of sawdust below, before going back to get the next one. They were busy! I assume they are building an ant hill. Do they KNOW how long that will take??? We watched for a while and heard not one complaint from the workers. A few were whistling.

On Tuesday, June 23rd, Greywolf headed west to Sidney, BC.

Doug and I secured Nexus cards last fall. With Nexus cards, boaters have many more choices for ports of entry. Since we almost always clear at Sidney, we’re not sure that is of any advantage, but if we ever want to clear at Uclulet on the west coast of Vancouver Island, we’re good to go.

The procedure is new to us. We read about the procedure: Call the 800 number one half to four hours before you depart your US port. If you answer all the questions correctly, you can then proceed to your chosen Customs Port of Entry at your chosen time. If no official appears at the agreed-upon time, you are free to move about the country.

There is no cell service in Prevost Harbor. We motored along, enjoying the beautiful day, the Nexus procedure temporarily filed in a Do Not Disturb part of our brains. When Doug noticed that Greywolf had crossed the dotted line in the middle of Boundary Pass, we had to decide if we needed to motor back into US waters before we called.

Approaching Turn Point, US waters, again.

We don’t know much, but we do know that you DO NOT MESS WITH THE CUSTOMS PEOPLE. They might be sitting around with nothing to do but monitor vessels on the AIS system. Greywolf turned around.

We found cell coverage off of Turn Point and, after answering all of the questions correctly, we chose 3:00 as our arrival time and were told to proceed to Port Sidney.

Okay, the bottom round brass instrument is the barometer.

Don’t try to read it. The top one IS the clock and it does not say 3:00. It says 1500 hours. Greywolf, after all, does think that she is a (very) small ship. Actually, those instruments have been with us more than 30 years, gracing many a boat. But we still get confused sometimes trying to tell the time. That’s why we have the digital....

Tied up at the Customs Dock at 2:50 we watched our clocks and we with the skipper off a trimaran opposite us.

They (the officials) won’t be down. You’re the third boat to arrive today. No one has shown up.

Do you have any eggs? Eggs have been the taboo item for the last few weeks.. People had been tying up and needing to jettison their eggs before the official arrived. I had dozens of eggs. They just kept coming. I’m not sure what the item of the month is now.

We had neither eggs nor a Customs Official.

Greywolf settled into her assigned slip to enjoy Canada.

Downtown Sidney is know for its beautiful flowers. This stunning planting included

a Poodle Bum. The soft white fur carefully accents the pale pink of the geraniums.

The leash is a bit of a distraction. Allie couldn’t agree more.

In addition to beautiful flowers, Sidney has many independent book stores and THREE pet stores. It is Allie’s go-to-town for re-stocking her toy box. She scored a zebra that squeaks and a fabric skunk that had somehow ingested an empty water bottle. If you don’t own a dog, you are probably not aware that the noise created by mouthing one of those bottle is a delight to dogzz. Maybe it sounds like bones breaking.

I think her name is Abby. She kept a careful eye on Allie, probably in response to Allie’s body language: I think I can climb the cat tree and chase her around the store.

Oh! How could I forget to mention Sidney’s metal sculptures???

Allie loves meeting people.

Equipment Failure Report: Sometime after we left Bainbridge, the power supply to our Macbook Pro decided that its had been ripped out of the electrical outlet and/or the computer by dog-bouncing-across-the-settee once too often. It wanted to be replaced.

Downtown Sidney had flowers, bookstores, pet stores and sculptures. It does not have an Apple store. Boating friends, Carol and Don, loaned us their car and we drove to the Best Buy in Langford where we found a replacement power cord. AND a Costco! Our small freezer is now home to bird-flu-free chicken parts.

Carol, the owner of the Rescue Shopping Vehicle, with dogzz on the dock.