The boat part came in right on time on Saturday morning. The hydraulic steering unit shipped from Vancouver overnight. Darrel struggled with it for a couple of hours, because, of course, it wasn’t exactly the same. He finally got it on, but it didn’t give us full range with steering. The part was not exactly the same and had to be adapted. Why, they do that, I have no clue! At least we could steer, however.

So, at about 3:00 Saturday afternoon we headed for the fuel dock and then to either fish and go back to Campbell River or head south. It all depended on the winds and waves. My back still had not recovered from the Strait of Georgia crossing a week and a half ago.

We got out of the harbour and it was calm and clear, so off we went South. We got about 10 miles North of Comox and saw a lot of fishing boats, so we stopped and put out the lines. Trolled around for an hour or two and caught a small silver.

We decided, since it was after 5:00, we would stay at Comox that night. It is a large marina with mostly commercial fishing boats, sailboats, and really, really large pleasure boats. Here we were docked between 2 boats that were probably 65 feet or so in length. Felt a little out of place.

We headed up to the ‘pub’ for dinner thinking a bar with burgers. Nope. First question was if we had reservations and I looked around and immediately felt under dressed in my wrinkled tank top and shorts.

We ended up at the bar and ordered sandwiches. I had a Montrealer and Darrel had an Italian panini. The Montrealer was ‘smoked’ beef, with cheese, onions and a Caesar salad. The beef didn’t really tasted smoked, more like dried. It was good, but maybe someone who has been to Montreal can explain it to me.

We took showers at the marina before bed. It was the largest marina shower I have ever seen! A bit more expensive, however, as it was 1 loonie for 2 1/2 minutes. Usually, it more like a loonie for 4 or 5 minutes! But it felt good to get clean.

We left Comox around 6:15 and headed towards Nanaimo where we fueled up again. Darrel also went to the fishing supply store and bought some new downrigger line since he had lost 2 balls with the old stuff.

We stopped once more by Tree Island to fish for ling cod. The island had a house on it and they had brought in multiple tons of boulders to create their own little harbour with a dock for a boat. Can’t even begin to think how much that all must have cost.

We ended up at Montague Harbour (notice I am spelling it the Canadian way) with all the yacht club friends plus more. The Lande’s, Josowitz’s, both Bryant boys and their families, the Wamsley’s and us. Quite a raft of boats – largest one in the harbour.

Darrel, Carl, and Ken Bryant all worked on our boat most of the day trying to get the steering to work right. The managed to get it to improve, but it still isn’t quite right. It worked much better, though. Many more dollars to be spent, I imagine, when we get home! Yikes, this has been an expensive trip!

Today, we headed to Ladysmith with the Bryant families while the rest of the group headed back to the USA. We took 6 year old, Waylon, with us because he wanted to fish and shrimp. We stopped for a couple of hours but didn’t catch andy fish and only got 6 shrimp. He probably won’t want to go do that again!

It has been hot and sunny all day today and I think more is on the way tomorrow. I am fixing Asian marinated pork tenderloin tonight with roasted potatoes, cauliflower and broccoli.

It has been a good couple of days!

P.S. Just thought that we, or at least I, have been on this 24 foot boat for like 17 days. We haven’t quite killed each other yet, even though the boat problems have made it close.