Montague Marine Park to Chemainus Marina July 5th-6th

The weather returned to its rainy and cloudy state so we decided to leave Montague Marine Park and head over to the town of Chemainus and the Chemainus Marina. The weather along the way opened up and poured, didn’t quite rinse the boat clean, but at least most of the travel dust came off the outside.
The harbor at Chemainus is small, and run by a gentlemen named Harmen. Harmen is simply charming and just the friendliest person you will ever meet. He helped us squeeze into a tight spot and Alexus maneuvered the boat expertly. We had electricity, water, and a short walk up the dock to the town. One of the travel books talks about the marina being close to the ferry and getting some rocking and rolling until nightfall, but we did not find it to be unpleasant and even less than we experienced at Friday Harbor. That afternoon we had Sushi at a little Japanese restaurant and walked the town. Chemainus was a logging town and when that closed down, the city council looked for ways to bring work back into the city. A council member had seen where a town in Europe invited artists to paint murals all over town related to the cities history and to attract tourists to see the murals. Well, it worked for Chemainus, they have an annual average of 650,000 people visit the town. They also have a large theater festival and pull in folks from all over Vancouver Island. In fact, we loved the idea so much, we bought tickets for a professional equity presented musical, “South Pacific”. The matinee included lunch, which was themed to the play and we enjoyed a wonderful stage presentation on Sunday July 6th. We went on a horse drawn tour of the town where they describe the history and point out the “vanishing point” perspectives of the 40 murals in the town. While we were at the dock, we met the folks docked next to us. They had caught some nice crab right off the back of their boat. I was amazed and shared that we had tried over at Montague, but had no luck. When we returned from our play Steve, had caught and cleaned and cooked four crabs. We thanked him profusely and I gave him a big hug. It was so sweet of him to do that. So after our big afternoon at the play we returned to the boat to dine on fresh crab.