At the dock

A few weeks ago I promised to write about living at the dock in Victoria's Inner Harbour. Here are some pictures to try to explain our living and working situation.

1. At the dock: In the first picture you see Never for Ever docked for the first time in our berth, at the end of September. In the second picture, taken a few weeks later, you see our boat bow on, with a very large yacht called Attessa in the background. Attessa is 332 feet long, roughly the length of a Canadian football field; Never for Ever is about one-tenth that size.

2. Coming and going: This is the gate through which we enter and leave our dock; it is protected with a passcode lock. In the first picture, you see our boat on the left-hand side (with Attessa in the background again). The second picture is the night view, which is how we see the entrance most of the time lately. Frankly, I find the area outside our gate a little frightening at night and don't often venture out alone.

3. Looking north: This pictures looks north from the next dock. Never for Ever has the tall mast at almost exactly the centre of the image. This is the view from Red Fish Blue Fish, a very popular seafood restaurant that is closed right now (it will re-open in the spring); it is also the view from the marina showers, which is where we do our laundry (in washing machines and dryers, of course, not in the showers themselves!).

4. Looking northwest: Night views from the dock. These picture are from early December, when some of the other boats had raised seasonal lights on their masts and booms. The yellow lights give the marina an eerie glow at night.

5. Looking west/southwest: The first view is from Wharf Street, overlooking the marina and into the harbour itself. This is the water route we follow to leave the harbour — if we were taking a day sail to Race Rocks, for instance. It's a busy harbour, even in the fall and winter, in part because of the planes that come into and leave the Harbour Air dock several times a day, as you see in the second picture. When we told people we were spending the winter aboard at this marina, many warned us we'd find the planes loud and irritating, but that hasn't been the case. In the second picture, you can also see the marina showers (the small red-roofed building on the left-hand side of the image).

6. Looking south: If you've been in Victoria, you know the Parliament Buildings are lit at night. (By the way, they are "Parliament" buildings, and not legislative buildings, because Victoria was once a colonial capital. We took the tour!) Here's the view from our boat, including the Steamship Terminal, which is also lit at night. (If you were in Victoria when Mme Tussauds Wax Museum was still here, it was housed in the Steamship Terminal building.) Every morning I say hello to the lights in the southern sky, requiring that I stand on my tiptoes to look out the galley windows because I'm me-sized, aka short.

7. A better view: This picture was taken on Christmas Eve. This is the view from Ship's Point and gives you a much better sense of Victoria at Christmastime: lights everywhere!

8. Fort Street: Fort Street is our closest east–west road. This is the view looking back at the boat from halfway between Wharf Street and Government Street. The mast you see poking up behind the car is ours.

9. Our "office": Otherwise known at the Victoria Public Library on Broughton Street. Most days we arrive at about nine o'clock and work until four or five. We usually occupy the same table every morning, although it's catch as catch can if we leave for lunch and then return.

Amenities in downtown Victoria are great. We have our choice of three grocery stores, each about a kilometre away, and three liquor stores even closer — one around the corner from the library. We have memberships at the Royal BC Museum, which is next door to the Parliament Buildings, so we visit every week or two. (It's a wonderful place to rest one's mind.) We have also walked to the Victoria Art Gallery and visited a few private galleries. We have a post office about three blocks away, where we receive our mail, and a movie theatre a block beyond that. We have a favourite pizza-by-the-slice place, one block north of the library, and a favourite pub, about two blocks from our marina. And Capital Iron ("There's no store like it!") is close, but distant enough that we don't go there all the time — because a person could spend a lot of time and money there, especially in the kitchenware section. There's really not much else we need.

Next, I'll post some pictures of places and things in our Victoria landscape.