Monday, July 30: Princess Bay to Cadboro Bay, Vancouver Island

Today we head south for a destination we’ve been looking forward to:  Victoria!  We’ve been there by boat a couple of other times, but it’s out of the way of our usual cruising area and eats up at least 3 days so we don’t go often.

In the past, we’ve enjoyed a stopover in Cadboro Bay.  It’s the home of the University of Victoria, a nice bay, a quaint village in its own right that has a one-block business district and a great park right on the sandy beach, and only about 8 nautical miles from Victoria.  We like to anchor there overnight, then get an early start into the city in the morning.  We usually stay a night or two right downtown, then come back for another night at Cadboro before heading north again into the Gulf Islands.

Both Cadboro Bay and Victoria are on the very south eastern tip of Vancouver Island, and basically lie on the Strait of Juan de Fuca.  We travel SE down Haro Strait, with Vancouver Island off to our right until we “turn the corner” and reach Cadboro.  As we got closer, the wind really started picking up and the sea got choppy.  We’ve been in worse, but it was still uncomfortable.  Once we actually made the turn, it really picked up.  We couldn’t wait to get into the protection of the bay.  Unfortunately, to our dismay, the bay was almost as choppy as outside!  After we anchored, the wind was howling from the southwest and good sized rolling waves were bounding in, hitting us broadside and rocking us back and forth.  Hmmm.  It’s never been like this for us in here.  Not much we could do, though.

We checked the marine forecast and found out that there are strong wind warnings in this area for until Friday.   We were REALLY looking forward to going to Victoria, but we REALLY didn’t want to venture out into the Strait of Juan de Fuca during strong wind warnings.  We know the boat can handle it, just not sure about our stomachs.  You don’t want to mess with the Strait when it’s misbehaving.

We sat on the boat, at anchor, almost feeling seasick because of the waves.  What to do?  And then it dawned on us:  we’re only about 10 miles from Victoria BY LAND!  Instead of beating ourselves up tomorrow cruising there, followed by the same thing the next day cruising back, we could just dinghy into shore and grab the bus that stops a block away!

Oh we feel much better.  This is a good plan.  The only downside is that it is going to be a long, sleepless night if this wind doesn’t die down.