Expedition Canada

Batteries not Included Tue Aug 24th  One of the many barges taking wood chips to Port Mellon  Wed Aug 25th Having checked out the Chevy Bolt Electric Vehicle (EV) on Sunday we arranged to take a closer look on Tuesday.  The red EUV (slightly larger than the EV) remained unsold on the forecourt.  We learnt that it, and all other Bolts were going to remain unsold due to a Chevrolet recall and sales ban.  They were happy to take a deposit on it, but we were not able to do a test drive. Irritated (understatement) we'd driven down to Sechelt when the salesman knew it could not be sold and then tried to sell something else was not a great dealership strategy.  It was particularly frustrating as we wanted to buy an EV from a Coast based dealership, rather than have to go back to Vancouver for servicing. GM are the only EV supplier on the Coast.  About ten of GM's earlier models have caught fire because of a battery fault, none of the...

And Peaks Sat Jun 19th Capt Jack It was something of a motorized day on the water in the morning and up the mountains in the afternoon. John Henry's does boat hire and the archipelago of islands and inlets around the Pender Harbour and Garden Bay areas of the Coast would offer a different perspective to looking at it from atop a mountain. Safety demo complete, gear loaded on board, Jack wrapped around my knees, we headed out of the harbour. Nick took in the view from the foredeck and once Jack was peeled away from me he rather got the hang of watching the birds, seals and general flotsam and jetsam. Hugging the coastline of the bays and avoiding the flotilla of racing boats heading out to the Georgia Strait, we followed the coastline around Pender Harbour. The black line shows the route. It is a fantastic way to get a better view of the area, but not always easy to locate the familiar areas we know so well on land, from the water. Jack was clearly taken by the seal but resiste...

Just Awesome Mon Jun 7th Skookumchuck Today was our planned visit to the Skookumchuck Narrows.  The part of the northern Sunshine Coast where the ocean flows through a narrow funnel to fill and empty the Sechelt Inlet each tide.   The Sechelt Inlet is a huge body of water that covers some 1500km2, and the tidal flows in and out are huge.   "Each day, tides force large amounts of seawater through the narrows—200 billion US gallons (760,000,000 m3) of water on a 3-metre (9.8 ft) tide. The difference in water levels on either side of the rapids can exceed 2 metres (6.6 ft) in height. Current speeds can exceed 16 knots (30 km/h),[1] up to 17.68 knots (32.74 km/h).[2] Although it is sometimes claimed to be the fastest tidal rapids in the world,[3] Norway's Saltstraumen reaches speeds of 20 knots (37 km/h)." It is an awesome sight and sound and having seen it on the way in, the 'flow' wave, I rather like the idea of seeing it on the way out, the 'ebb' wave!  So...