Alaska Trip Day 8

5/23/11

Nanaimo, B.C.

Miles Motored:  33

Miles Sailed:  0

We were up at the usual 7am time and I wanted to take advantage of the fact that we were in a town and could go out for breakfast!  We loaded the boys up in the carriers and walked to the end of the bay to the Harbour Inn and had a great breakfast.  The boys shared the kid’s pancakes and Tor and I each had 2 egg breakfasts and the sourdough bread and strawberry rhubarb jam were both homemade.  Yum!

Instead of laundry like we had been planning, we had breakfast, and just planned to do a load in our next stop, Nanaimo.  It ended up being a pretty expensive treat since that meant paying for moorage in Nanaimo, but it was so nice to eat breakfast out!  We needed to make sure we left the dock by 9:30 so we could hit Dodd Narrows at slack water on our way to Nanaimo so we didn’t have time for laundry or showers after breakfast.   I motored us away from the dock at about 9:15 while Tor put two very tired boys down for their nap.   Unfortunately they only slept about 30 minutes and were NOT happy when they woke up, but I was able to calm them down by nursing.  As an aside, I’m so GLAD I have that tool while we are out here.  It means we don’t have to have as much cow’s milk with us, and nursing offers such comfort. 

Tor motored us towards Dodd narrows while I worked on baking bread down below.  It was very warm with the stove on so I decided the boys needed a little diaper free time and they totally loved it.  I also got some cute pics!

Diaper Free time!

By the time the boys needed to go down for their nap the bread had raised the first time and was in the loaf pan raising for the 2 time.  It was going too fast since I didn’t want to put the bread in the oven while the boys were asleep and risk them having a short second nap too, so I put it on deck in hopes that it might slow down some.  Well, the boys had a good long nap and that bread just kept rising, so I punched it down and let it rise again, for a total of 3 extra risings.  I was eventually able to get it in the oven when the boys woke up.

We made good time and got to Dodd Narrows early even though Tor kept slowing down.  We ended up going through about 40 minutes before slack without incident.  We arrived in Nanaimo at about 4pm and we pulled up the fuel dock to fill up, then we were tied up for the night at 4:15.

We were thinking we would eat out for dinner but after walking around a bit, most everything was closed for Victoria day.  There is a little floating restaurant in the boat basin we were tied up in that we tried, but my patience was very short and the boys were working on taking the table cloth off and pulling down the decorations so I just made the executive decision that we needed to get back to the boat and get them some food and get them to bed.  It was a good choice, and we even found something to eat with little effort.  It’s interesting how with the little boys sometimes the easiest thing is to just eat at home.  The convenience of someone making your food doesn’t always outweigh the work involved in getting them all set at a restaurant.

After the boys went to bed we went to do laundry and I tried unsuccessfully to find internet.