We slept well even with the heat and woke the next morning none the worse for the heatstroke of the day before. In taking photo's of the sunset though I had clearly spent too long staring directly at the sun and couldn't leave the cabin without wearing sunglasses!

Our plan for today was to head up to Nanaimo and a bit of civilization. This though involved us transiting Dodd Narrows; a very small channel barely 200ft wide through which currents can flow at up to 9 knots. To add to this all the guides mentioned how popular it was and so it can often be crowded with boats, barges and log booms at slack water. So this was to prove yet another challenge for us (do they ever stop??)

the day was warm and still again so motoring was the order of the day. We left Preedy harbour a little earlier than we needed thinking that as usual things would take longer than planned but this time we arrived in the vicinity of Dodd Narrows too early for slack. We found a good spot to anchor for an hour or so but all this did was increase the tension on the boat - we just wanted to get this done. Eventually, we could wait no longer and, although we were still a little early we headed out. Going across to the Mudge Island side we started heading towards the narrows which looked impossibly small.

As we travelled north we saw one sailboat attempt to enter the narrows only to get spat out , out of control, down the Vancouver Island side by the current. As this happened we realised we were in an eddy being sucked towards the narrows faster than we wanted. With the engine as low as we dare, we plunged forward at 3 knots, crossed our fingers and counted the minutes to slack which we knew only lasted for 15 minutes or so.

As we crossed the current we gunned the engine and headed into the narrowest part of the channel, luckily with no other boats coming the other way. We hit the channel exactly on slack (to the minute) and breathed a great sigh of relief as Northumberland Channel came into view on the far side. Just as we exited half a dozen jet skis shot through on either side of us giving a fantastic celebratory flair to our transit

Once into Northumberland Straight the wind picked up and we had a great sail down the channel. That was until we got into the more commercial end of the channel where we decided that we should get the motor back on....and when I say commercial it was BUSY. We dodged log booms, barges pulling out, tugs practicing, float planes landing and finally going head to head with the Salts spring ferry before finally anchoring in Mark bay by Newcastle island around 3:30

Our adventures weren't over for the day though as we spent the next three hours trying to find showers that worked (which involved Heidi smuggling me into the ladies on Newcastle Island) and laundry done before a fish supper on the docks at Nanaimo.