Jul 5th and 6th

Tofino is a quaint little touristy town. It’s a combination of surfers who come to ride the waves off the big long beaches south of the town and the up market crowd who own a holiday house here with their SUVs. We were told that housing is expensive in town and there are many good restaurants.

We walked into town from the marina, and went to a restaurant named The Schooner to eat a late lunch/early dinner. We’d not had lunch yet. Had a lovely meal of wings, burger and ribs and Jim had a locally made beer. The trip may not have been bumpy but since I spent my afternoon cutting up fish, I smelled like one and didn’t feel like eating anything on the way up, so we had a big meal to make up for it.

After our meal we headed for the Co-op, their local grocery store and stocked up on some provisions as we were running low. We then walked to the playground and Jacintha went wild there. They had a little zip line that she enjoyed playing on.

At The Schooner
Whee! higher daddy!

After that we had ice cream and then we went back to the boat for hot showers! We were all fishy! Did it feel good to be clean! Since this was about the halfway mark of our trip and we have a little munchkin, I had to do laundry. The marina has a mixture of commercial fishing boats and recreational boats plus a lot of sports fishing boats. That means that the marina kind of smelled fishy! Despite the fact that I had a warm shower to wash the fishy smell off me from filleting the fish, I could still smell fish everywhere!

Jim did some boat chores and Jacintha watched “The Incredibles” which is a change from “The Sound of Music”. I’d introduced it to her at the beginning of the trip, during a long boring passage and all she does is play it on our portable DVD player over and over again, skipping forward to the songs she likes. Then when walking around she’ll burst out spontaneously into songs from the movie. It’s sweet when you hear her singing “I’m sixteen going on seventeen” as she’s only four! It’s funny that she doesn’t want to watch any of the Disney princess movies that I’ve gotten her since she’s obsessed wIth princesses and that she likes Julie Andrews and real live actors with great songs!

Woke up to a lovely sunny day. Watched a pair of bald eagles decide that the top of the mast was a great perching spot for fishing or perhaps they were scouting out a new place for a nest! They were a dock finger away!

Eagles on the mast.

After a leisurely breakfast of monster pancakes, Jacintha and I went for a walk into town. I had to go to the bank as I only had $5 Canadian left. Jim wanted to do some boat chores. We browsed the shops, went to the bank and were walking back to the boat when Jim found us. Got a new rainbow trout flag for the boat and then I took Jacintha to the park, while Jim went back to get some charts from the marine store and supplies from the boat. Jacintha whizzed down the zip line, swung on the swings and climbed the monkey bars to her hearts delight and even made a friend!

Monster pancake!

Jim met us and we had a light lunch of tacos before heading out on a walk to Tonquinn beach. It was a pleasant 20 minute walk to the beach through a forest reserve over a board walk and stairs. The beach had a large shallow tidal pool fed by a stream separated from the ocean by 100 feet of sand. A natural wading pool!! There were a bunch of kids swimming in the swimming hole having a ball. Jacintha got so excited and quickly put on her bathing suit and started to go berserk and running rings around the sand and rolling around in it, and making sand angels! She swam in the water which was much warmer than the cold ocean, and she made sand castles with her bucket and shovel. It was cloudy there but sheltered from the wind so we stayed there for a while. Jim and I had snacks on our picnic blanket. We finally had to call Jacintha to change as it was getting chilly.

We walked back into town and Jacintha managed to walk all the way to the bakery where we stopped to get hot chocolates and coffee. We then stopped at the co-op to get a few more supplies and we had a shopping cart with the car in front of it which Jacintha hopped into. When we finished at the checkout we looked in the car and she was fast asleep! So Jim carried her back to the boat! She woke up at the boat and was chirpier than ever!

That evening Jim decided to put our crab pot out to try and catch a few crabs. We have this lovely foldable crab pot that we got at the boat show one year. Our luck with crabbing has been dismal in the recent years – it’s too warm at Desolation Sound last year but Jim was feeling lucky! He took his fishing pole out to try and catch some small fish to use as bait. Jacintha went with him but got cold so came back. I baked salmon, broiled salmon collars and mashed potatoes for dinner. When dinner was ready, I rang our big ships bell to call Jim in. It’s new and was pretty loud and he heard it all the way out there in the middle of the Duffin Passage!

After dinner we had movie night. Jim had never watched The Sound of Music and he’d been hearing Jacintha singing all the songs. So this night we watched half of it! Jacintha was very excited that her daddy was going to watch her favorite movie with her and have popcorn!