On our voyage towards desolation sound today we traveled 37 miles from Ladysmith to Fairwinds marina north of Nanaimo. It may haven been close to 30 miles, but we did some back and forth fishing for about 90 minutes. In that time I caught 3 undersized salmon that I immediately released. They were so small that even if it was legal to keep them it woudl not have been worthwhile.

To start the day we left Ladysmith and headed north to Dodd Narrows, and we timed it perfectly, except for there was a log boom being towed through at our time of arrival, and we had to wait almost half an hour in a lineup of almost 10 boats waiting to get through. When there is a tug pulling a load of logs that is almost as wide as the narrows, there is nothing you can do but just wait. I learned a new boating term today, a “parade” of ten boats transiting northbound through Dodd Narrows.

From there we headed north past Nanaimo and in through the Winchelsea Islands where they have Winchelsea control the station in charge of running Whiskey Golf, the submarine and torpedo testing area. Fortunately it was not in use today and we were free to transit the area.

Then on to Fairwinds an extremely nice marina, friendly staff and a really nice restaurant with happy hour drinks and snacks. I wish I had taken a picture of the poke nachos, oysters on the halfshell, shrimp potstickers, or crab dip, however we were quite hungry and taking pictures was not top on my list of things to do.

The Fairwinds marina was very nice, free laundry and free showers.

Here is our route for today, making the trip so far 4 nights and 100 miles. We will be fueling up in the morning before we head out.