Today was meant to be a rainy day with little wind and so we had decided to take advantage of the 'worst' weather day in transiting down to Montague Bay. 

After lying in bed listening to a downpour in the early hours of the morning we woke expecting a somewhat glum and uneventful passage.  The weather however decided to surprise us by being quite pleasant with broken sunshine all day. 

We left our anchorage around 09:30 and reached Gabriola passage (one of the few points that you can move between the straits of Georgia and the inner gulf islands) exactly on slack thus avoiding any tidal dramas.  Once through we had a healthy breeze but unfortunately on the nose.  Watching another yacht make slow progress tacking across the narrow channel we decided to motor.  With constant fresh wind though we were soon revaluating and decided we should try some sailing instead. After going through a small gap between two islands we therefore put up the sails (reefed) and turned off the engine.  As soon as we did this though, the wind increased to between 15 and 20 knots and started changing direction with alarming regularity.  We kept trying to work what was happening but after checking the wind log we realised we were fighting a loosing battle due to the variability of the wind, rolled the Genoa up and started motoring again. 

Of course, as soon as we did that, the wind settled to a steady direction, if gusty. For the next half hour we vacillated between whether we should turn the engine off and eventually reset the gennoa and staysail and headed off without the engine.  The wind continued variable for the rest of the day, going from 6 - 18 knots with alarming regularity but we carried on sailing pretty much all the way to Montague. 

On arrival we struggled to decide where to anchor but only because there was so MUCH space (a situation we aren't used to) and eventually dropped with plenty of scope around 3pm.  After settling in we got out the dinghy and went for a short wander on shore before having a very pleasant evening in calm weather on the boat.  With very settled and sunny weather expected the next couple of days our plan is to explore Galiano Island further and do some boat maintenance.