On leaving Smugglers Cove our plan had been to head further along the sunshine coast initially shooting for Gibsons landing. Heading down the coast towards Sechelt though we soon found ourselves fighting a strong headwind and adverse current. Knowing that we were into areas we could always come back to therefore, we decided that it was not worth bashing east if we didn't have to and so we spun the wheel and headed back to Nanaimo and familiar waters.

A fresh motor sail across the Straight of Georgia got us into Nanaimo mid afternoon. We popped in and fueled up and then headed back to Newcastle Island, this time picking up a mooring buoy. We marveled on the trip through to the anchorage how much more relaxed we now were since we were last here, several weeks ago. We breezed into the gas dock and just decided which bouy we wanted, then picked it up - none of the drama of our last trip here!

With sunny weather we decided to stay in Nanaimo for another day and enjoyed exploring Newcastle Island as well as spending time around the town.

The next morning we got up and waited for the tide to be right to go back through Dodd Narrows. Again, we basked in our new found confidence. The terror of running the narrows on the way up was gone and we pottered over to arrive about 30 minutes before slack. The big challenge though was that it was much busier this time with twenty or more boats trying to transit in the small window. It was a bit of a zoo going through the narrows but we were soon through and heading back south. We were originally heading for Pirate's cove again (Arrgh!) but decided because of the weather instead to go to Herring Bay which turned out to be a beautiful little anchorage once we got past the proximity of the rocks! As we explored the bay it definitely lived up to it's name as a herring spawning ground. as we kayaked around there were so many small fish it felt like we should be able to walk on the water