Cruising Adventures of the Red Witch

As our days off approached once again, the forecast looked nice, and we decided to head down to Calvert Island to visit the beaches. The last time that we were at Calvert Island was in the beginning of December 2019 just before we headed to Ocean Falls for the first time. On that trip, Pruth Bay froze over and the icy north winds pummeled North Beach. We got fresh snow on the beaches and had a wonderful time. This trip, however, we were hoping for warmer weather, and with sunshine in the forecast it looked promising. Before we headed out early in the morning we woke up to a rainbow in the marine cloud. It was a beautiful almost off-world sky. We headed out, and although we were hoping that the forecasted winds would make for good sailing, they remained calm all day. We motored over smooth water and made our way down past familiar anchorages. Anchoring in Pruth Bay we remembered our excitement the first time that we anchored there and explored the island. Since then we hav...

For one of our chunks of time off this summer the weather was forecasted to be rainy and cool, so we decided to go on a summer vacation. On Tuesday, July 13th, we flew out on the goose plane. I got to sit in the cockpit with the pilot and talk to him through the headset, and, as always, the flight out was amazing, with stellar views of the coastline that we know so well. We rented a car in Port Hardy, and drove down-island to Nanaimo where we caught the 8pm ferry over to Vancouver and continued driving. We spent the night in a hotel and continued on our journey on Wednesday. Since we were on vacation, we took some time on the drive to explore some of the areas that we had always just driven by in the past. We stopped for a picnic lunch beside the beautiful Skagit River, and then further along took a turn-off from Highway 3 in Manning Park. We drove past an incredible lookout and continued up into the alpine where we went on a short hike, wishing that we had more time and som...