Man, I totally fail at this blogging thing. Tour's long since over. Let me give you a little recap. I think we left off in Nanaimo, on the way to Hornby Island. The Hornby show was at the Joe King Hall with not only our pals Meg and Dave, but also PeSt, who lives on Hornby. Lots of folks there, and the hall is awesome. Jude and Steph hooked us up with a place to stay that night with some folks they know. We got in late, long after these folks had gone to sleep to find a note and some treats left out for us. In the morning we saw them for about a minute and a half, just long enough to down some glasses of orange juice before zooming off to make the early ferry. Nonetheless, thank you to the Rogalskys!
The next show was at Moss Dance's farm in Courtenay. Moss picked us up from the ferry terminal and there was a brief scare about a lost backpack full of valuable and irreplaceable things, but that was retrieved. We got to walk around Moss's beautiful property among floating bits of cottonwood. The concert that night was great - a very appreciative audience and just a lovely show.
We took the train that morning down to Nanaimo with best intentions. We got into Nanaimo and took the boat out of the harbour, and were then faced by big waves and a runaway dinghy. After a little thought and a few passes with the boathook, we retrieved the dinghy and thought it best to go back and anchor in Nanaimo rather than anchor off of the dockless wonder known as Lantzville in sketchy conditions. We took the bus up to our show in Lantzville that night, which was a major disappointment, because my friend who I was hoping would come down from Qualicum Beach didn't show up. Tragedy! I basically moped the whole night because of that, but our small audience seemed very happy to have us. That night we got back to Nanaimo for what was thankfully our last night in Nanaimo. We didn't even have a show in Nanaimo and yet somehow we ended up stuck there for days.
The next day was pretty much what made the whole tour worth it; we kissed Nanaimo's sorry ass goodbye and sailed almost all the way across the strait solely by sail in just a few hours. We got near Gibsons before we turned down toward Vancouver. At that point we lost our wind, so we had to turn on the iron sail. The waves were no longer in our favour, and they started to rock us in a most unpleasant fashion that caused Adam & I to liberate our luncheons into the briny deep. When we got to Vancouver we got a call from some friends who were hanging out at Jericho Beach, so we decided to anchor and row in to meet them. Coming at jericho beach that way was a very surreal experience; we felt like severely foreign explorers. We hadn't seen big crowds for almost 2 weeks so the people running around and playing volleyball seemed very bizzarre and alien. I managed to communicate with one of the natives in an improvised form of sign language and they prepared one of their local delicacies for me, known as a "Veggie Burger". we found our pals and hung out for a little while before rowing back to the mothership, and mooring ourselves near granville island.
The next day, June 15th, we had three shows. First of all, I had to carry every single piece of musical equipment we had while Adam & Ryan anchored the boat in false creek. I would have actually been able to manage it if not for the mandolin (or if the mandolin case had had a strap). June 15th was Vancouver's car free festival, so I took all our gear down to the Davie Street portion of the festival. Ryan and Adam met me there a bit later and we played a short set there, taxied (on car-free day - awesome, huh?) over to the Main Street part of the festival, played a short set on stage 2 or something there, and then made our way down to Our Town Cafe for our show there that night. The Ben Kelly Experience opened the show for us, which was an absoloute blast, because those guys are awesome. I was actually kind of nervous about having to follow them. But our set went really well, and we had Ben himself come play drums with us on a couple of tunes, so that kicked ass. There were a ton of people there too, (thanks Carla!) so that helped subsidize some of the money losing shows (ahem, Duncan), and at that point we ended up at something like 100 dollars behind for the tour in general. Considering that paid for three guys to eat and sleep and have an amazing sailing adventure (and drink) for 2 weeks, not half bad. So therefore, the verdict on the tour is:
Success!! W00t.
The next weekend, we made the money back biking to the Sooke Potholes campground playing at the Land Conservancy's Pedal to the Potholes event, so you could consider that a part of the tour. Which put us in the green! Not too shabby for a band's first trip out into the world, especially on a sailboat.
Soon I will post pictures, too, so you can have not only the Fish & Bird Sailboat Tour textual experience, but the Fish & Bird Sailboat Tour pictorial experience as well.
Toodles for now, kiddies!
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