trip 2 to vancouver, 9 – 19 aug 2013

so last day of the trial, after drinking the champagne aimee had got us at trader joes i had two choices: (1) fly back to Vancouver or (2) go straight back to palapa in Antigua.  i was feeling pretty low after the trial and really wanted to be back in paradise but aimee had a wedding going in Vancouver the next week she wanted to show me off at and my last trip had been so amazing i decided to go with the Vancouver option.

this time i had to pick up all the parts we where taking back from larry so customs was not such a breeze.  there was no welcoming committee and no rock star hotel.  i grabbed a cab to amiee’s friend joanna’s place (pretty nice).  aimee was working her butt off with work so the next day we cabbed it to the ferry and seashelt.  she had to take the seaplane back to work the next day so i got to spend quality time with her parents.

it was quite fun, first day two days we went crabbing, then george conned me into mowing his whole lawn on the john deer while he drank beer and smiled a lot.  fortunately a few days later the relatives started to pile in for the wedding parking two giant mobile homes in the yard.  at this point i was out of umpf and trying to study for my impending yachtmaster exam so i was able to push the crabbing off on some younger members of the family.

eventually aimee came back and we took her parents out to dinner for their their 40th anniversary (+-). we worked a trip on george’s new boat in and two days of trying to fix the genset.  apparently onan is even worse than panda, we tried two different computers nothing worked and the schematic was clearly wrong.  good luck george.

the day out on the water was great george asked me to help anchor and when i recommended a spot with 10 ft of water he nicely pointed out that they had a 15 foot tidal swing and it was high tide.  we reanchored in 25 feet!  aimee took me to her “favorite” beach and i must stay i was a bit underwhelmed.  no palm trees, no turquoise water and apparently a recent event no sand.  we took a walk and some pics but not the caribian!  aimee got to row back because the electric motor on the dingy ran out of omf.

i managed to survive a few more days of parties with the relatives and still be in top form for the wedding. for the wedding i managed to out dance pretty much everyone, jody was my best dance partner after aimee had called it a night.

along the way i got an email from my parents mentioning they where begin dropped off from their Alaska cruise in Vancouver on sun the day after the wedding.  i juggled a few things and got them new flights and convinced them to reorganize their plans so we could have them do the post wedding bbg with everyone in seashelt.

we just managed to get them on the ferry before it left with aimee running my mom down the entry gang on a souped up wheelchair.  i think they where a bit overwhelmed by it all but you have to take advantage of these opportunities!

laurel had offered to give us all a ride to seattle the next day.  this seemed to be a good plan but ended up being a drive from hell after stopping for aimee to buy a bra and a cosco stop we where 2 hours behind sched.  we had to abandon the west marine stop in order to make our scheduled rndv with chris smith for margaritas.

it was a prefect end to a world-win 10 day vacation!  we got my parents dropped off an checked in we all left on red eye flights.  aimee and i off to Antigua via jfk and mom and dad to orlando.  everyone survived!

oh and i almost forgot, one evening we launched a 60 foot drawler that had been in someone’s back yard being restored for several years.  could have done a whole tv show on this.  kind of like the country meets the ocean.  memorable events where george and i almost backing into the trailer leaving, randy with his hardhat lifting cables over the boat to get it down the highway and finally with the boat in the water holding a line pointing out the boat was in gear and pulling everyone into the water.

cheers,
Roger