We left Narvaez Bay in glorious calm weather. As soon as the anchor was up, Di took the helm and steered the boat all the way to the entrance of Cabbage / Tumbo Islands lined with dangerous rocks. That's when I took back over (but I used the autopilot in Auto mode) to negotiate the entrance. Di was helping keeping an eye on things and in particular the charts.
It was Di's first time at the helm and she made fast progress. At first our track resembled what a malfunctioning autopilot would generate if it lost its heading. But soon, she started steering straight and true, then later she was following the magnetic compass repeater with ease. Not always an easy task for beginners, as heading numbers can be confusing.
We'll make a sailor out of her yet!
Cabbage Island is part of a low laying formation, which means it doesn't offer much protection, especially at high tides when the waves from the straight could easily enter the narrow anchorage. We found quite a crowd, which wasn't a surprise considering we were nearing Canada Day and Cabbage is a locals favorite due to its shallow waters and sandy beach. That means the sea temp is somewhat warmer than in most other places, so many crazy locals were swimming in about 60f water. Since Di and I don't do cold water, we did not partake.
The island is tiny and even letting Princess sniff around and get distracted by deers and raccoons, we can walk all around the periphery in about 20 minutes. Being low, the island offers different sights from other places in the Gulf Islands National Park, and best of all the anchorage offers unrestricted views over the straight all the way to Vancouver and down to Mount Rainier. Nearby Tumbo has longer walking trails leading to old abandoned buildings. The large beach on the southern side is beautiful but the bay offers even less protection than the regular anchorage, so would be fair weather anchoring only.
As Canada Day approached, boats came and went, but the anchorage remained busy. As soon as the festivities were over however, the anchorage emptied down to only 5 boats. With the rain the next day, most remaining boats left, including us as we have a marina reservation in Port Sidney Marina for the end of the week. We're starting to look forward to provisioning. We'll have spent almost 3 weeks at anchor / cruising by then.
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