The home-port trip: out of Thunderbird Marina at first light and north up the Strait of Georgia, with a pair of humpbacks interrupting the passage – the gem of the Pacific Northwest, two school buses long, and nobody aboard pretending to be casual about it.
Savary Island first: five kilometres of sand and old-growth, deer running the place, lawn games and family. Then the anchorages north – Hernando, Cortez, and Desolation Sound, which Captain Vancouver named in a November and which in August is anything but desolate. Fresh-caught salmon for dinner, a rolly night on the hook, and a slow cruise home with a stop in Gibsons and a last quiet evening in Gambier's Center Bay.
These are the waters the practice calls home – the same coast that hides Nimmo Bay further north.