day 1 - Ladner to Thormanby Island (Lo49°30.0’L124°00.0’)

On schedule and accompanied by sunny skies, we left our moorage at Captain's Cove Marina, Ladner BC at 09:00. Swept with the outgoing current from the Fraser River and the outgoing marine tide, we reached a maximum speed of 8.5 knots until we reached Sandheads weather station. At this point the waters got a bit rough as river met sea, and some of the crew had naps. After 45 nautical miles, we reached Buccaneer Bay of Thormanby Island just before 17:00. And now it is anchor down, BBQ smoking, excursions to shore, and evening jiggers of rum.

pirate toes

We're getting all of the last minute details taken care of before we disembark - enough water, enough food, enough diesel, enough sunscreen, enough beer. And cute toes. If you're going to go barefoot for 5 weeks, best be having some cute digits.


Arrrr, don't be messing with us, can't you see from my toes that we are dangerous and mean business? Now, surrender the booty....

ROCM Certified! (That’s so you can talk on the VHF radio)

Less than three weeks until we start our island circumnavigation! 

Before we head out we figured it would probably be a good idea to get educated in at least one piece of emergency equipment, so Erin and I are no longer pirate radio operators.  We are now official rocm holders.  For you normal people, that is a Radio Operator's Certificate (Maritime) for the VHF radio.

If no longer being able to use the radio illegally and sitting through an eight hour course on VHF radio protocol sounds boring, you are probably right.  Not trying to say the guy teaching it wasn’t good, I couldn’t have done any better at salvaging that subject either.

Picture yourself sitting through eight hours of this one minute video…  On Saturday morning with a hangover…  I’m not sure if I feel that I am any better equipped than before the course.  I don’t really remember much of the course at all, but must have done something right to pass it.  All I can remember is repeat everything three times – this is Thunderpussy, Thunderpussy, Thunderpussy…

ahoy maties!

thunder erin here, on my maiden thunder blog. as we prepare for our sailing adventures, both the august trip around vancouver island and any bigger journeys we may embark on in the future, we are also learning how best to chronicle our experiences. filming in digital video and then editting that video is part of our learning curve.

our recent trip to newfoundland and nova scotia gave us lots of video footage to play with. this is adam's creation, with our new adobe premiere elements 8.0 software. pretty good for an evening's work, i think!

(and please feel free to sing along if you know the words...)