After stopping in Seattle to pay Sierra, Brian, and Finlay a visit and see their new apartment, we arrived at Skyline, unloaded, and made a beeline for Spencer Spit State Park on Lopez Island. Several mooring buoys were open on the north side.

Aaaahhhhh….just in time for happy hour.

We’ve stayed here once before – nice but a little too rolly from ferry wash.

On Thursday morning we made a late start to ride with a more favorable current, headed for a new-to-us destination – Point Roberts. Point Roberts is a roughly 5-square-mile chunk of land that juts south from Canada into U.S. waters. (You may have heard about it because it was difficult to live there during Covid; and it’s home to the Rubber Duck Museum.) We’ve gone right by a few times but decided this would be a good place to stop on our way north to Vancouver B.C. 

What a pleasant surprise! The staff was friendly and helpful. They honored reciprocal yacht club moorage even though they didn’t have our club on their list. They seem very well organized. We had dinner at the Pier Restaurant and Grill right there at the marina. Nick’s mussels had been picked up locally an hour before, and my tuna poke was quite tasty. 

In the morning we took a 4+ mile walk out to Lighthouse Marine Park, into town to the market, and back to the marina. Next time, and we do assume we will return, we’ll get the bikes out and take a more thorough look around. This may be a go-to stop for us in the future, as it’s a direct route to Vancouver and the Sunshine Coast, just 35 nm from Skyline. Great walking, quiet marina, all-in-all a good experience.

Views from the park:

I couldn’t get over the face on this dock cat!

As you can tell by my photos, the weather is great; may be rain ahead.

As I mentioned, we are headed to Vancouver. In the past we were warned to give the Fraser River delta area a wide berth – better to just avoid it altogether. Just a note here that we have never had a problem. Our crossing of the southern portion of the Strait of Georgia on Thursday, as well as our passing of the Fraser River yesterday were relatively calm.

A humpback whale gave us a bit of show along the way!

Richard at the False Creek Yacht Club was able to get us into the same slip we tied up in last year. We had a bit of trouble calling in for customs clearance. When Nick told the agent our destination was the False Creek Yacht Club, they said they didn’t have that on their list so wouldn’t give us the go ahead. He called back, got a different agent, and gave False Creek Marina as our landing spot – we were good to go. Weird.

It rained a bit last night. We’ve got plans to ride our bikes and have dinner at our favorite Vancouver spot – Fanny Bay Oyster Bar.