Stocking Up

Nanaimo, BC, Canada

We arrived in Nanaimo yesterday, right on schedule.  Picked up a rental car for a few days so we can start the inevitable provisioning.  We would have actually gotten a start on it too, if we had not run into some great friends at the dock who we had not expected to see before we left.  Somehow the afternoon just disappeared at the pub.

First trip today was to Costco for the things we can get (and stow) in bulk.  After lugging all of that to the boat, Sue is off to Saveco for those smaller items, or items that Costco just doesn't have, with the scary parting words "I may be a while".  Temporary spot for a lot of this stuff is apparently the navigation table.  I'm sure it will all fit somewhere else eventually.

Meanwhile I tackled a last-minute job that cropped up the day we were leaving Nanaimo - one of the bilge pumps was no longer working.  As I suspected, a simple wiring problem, made much more difficult by the awkward position of the pump (oddly enough, at the bottom of the bilge), just about out of my arm's reach.  All is OK now.  I ran the engine for a while to check that all my previous modifications are still holding and everything still looks good.

The weather here was very nice yesterday - about 22 degrees when we arrived.  It did rain overnight, but today was still not too bad.  A little cool but very calm.  The sun actually came out for a short while this afternoon, so I took the opportunity to take some "before" pictures of the boat.  It may never look this good again.

Notice the nicely matching jerrycan and winch covers.

Here is my clever disappearing watermaker installation.

Here is the new home for our freezer, just under our bed.  We are lulled to sleep each night with the quite hum of the super efficient Engel freezer - sort of a comforting sound really.

With any luck, we should be able to get away by Monday or Tuesday, to start the long trek south.  We are almost calm about it too, although we have no idea why.

{GMST}49|11.33|N|123|56.832|W|Nanaimo, BC, Canada|Nanaimo, BC, Canada{GEND}