Butchart Shop

Although we had arrived to Wallace Island with mild chaos, our sojourn at the narrow, beautiful, marine park was calm and blissful. I could have stayed indefinitely, hiking the trails, watching birds and otters, and listening to the remarkable orchestra of clicking, clacking bivalves on the rocky shoreline.

Eventually though, the urge to further explore the Gulf Islands took hold. We also had realized we could improve our odds of executing a smooth stern tie with a minor investment in garden equipment and targeted a quick stop by yet another city to purchase parts for a small hack.

We spent hours making our way very slowly down the Trincomali Channel. The challenge was heading downwind in extremely light air with no dedicated downwind sails and no whisker pole, striving for balance between our main and head sail and seeking just the right touch on the wheel. It was careful, patient helming as we nudged the boat a few hundred yards at a time, before lazily gybing and trying to eke out a little more southing.

The sailing was fun and peaceful for the most part, with the occasional prolonged dodging of a dangerous obstacle ahead, the kind of high-stakes, slow-motion bumper car game that only sluggish boats are invited to play. After bearing toward Sidney, on Vancouver Island, via the Hope Channel, we finally resorted to the motor, but continued to bask in the wondrous geology of the Gulf Islands region and the luxurious knowledge we were headed toward the twin marvels of electrically operated, fully plumbed laundry machines and Canadian Tire, Canada's iconic everything store.

Marina staff were just as friendly at Port of Sidney as Nanaimo Harbour folks had been, the docking access was easy, and the shower and laundry facilities absolutely 5 star... especially when adjusted on the deep, deep curve of dockside amenities. We also were able to rent electric bicycles for some exploring and to run our errands. Twenty years ago, Sidney was famous for being a small town with a smorgasbord of independent booksellers. Modern economics and cultural habits have crushed that glorious claim to fame, but it remains a charming and vibrant village crowning the Saanich Peninsula, an area occupied for at least thousands of years by the ŴSÁNEĆ First Nations people.

A Canadian Tire foray resulted in a plastic garden hose reel and a few stainless steel u-bolts. After a few minutes of deckside surgery, we were able to Frankenbolt this contraption to the side of our boat and thus create a mechanism for easily feeding out the floating line we wanted to use for stern ties. Hopefully, this would help to prevent the previous disaster.

Chores complete, we departed Sidney in a dense fog, taking the John Passage between Coal and Goudge Islands, and rounding into Satellite Channel as the sun broke through in widening rays and scattered the mist. After approaching the eastern edge of Saanich Inlet we tacked toward Brentwood, with its strong liveaboard boat communities and reputation as an epicenter for the evolving legal complexities around permanent mooring balls, long-term anchoring, and the uncomfortable intersection between recreation and out-of-control housing prices.

There's an intensifying skirmish around the world involving the traditional freedom to anchor anywhere, the need for mindful environmental stewardship of waters, the desires of beachfront property owners and tourist towns, and other powerful socio-economic forces. Like all battles, there are striations of nuance—too many to address today—but it's a fascinating marine component of our rapidly fraying social contracts.

Ducking into Butchart Sound, we secured a very specifically legal mooring ball reserved for visitors to the adjacent botanical gardens. These balls, placed on one edge of the narrow cove, require a stern-tie and our second go at this technique was far smoother than the first. Garden hose reel FTW.

In the afternoon, we explored the gardens, indulged in an egregiously large and misnomered “gelato,” and rode a tiny carousel, as none of the actual children in the garden seemed sufficiently interested. The gardens are a fascinating place with a compelling story of extractive industry converted toward naturalish beauty…after all possible wealth was wrung from the site, of course.