Nootka has company! The Bender Family
August 2026 is all about sharing our baby girl with friends and family. For this we had to “empty the garage” which just means that we need to clear out our aft cabin. That is the cavern of space where we keep the cockpit cushions, the spinnaker, fishing gear and a bunch of other things that I am embarrassed to admit that I don’t know what it is and probably should. When we arrived after our month away from the dock, we got Nootka all spiffed up and ready to host.
The Bender Family
First up on the guest list was Jess’s climbing buddy, Billy, and his family. 7 people left the dock on a Friday afternoon – me, Jess, Billy, Amy and their 3 kids – Drew, Kylie and Blake. The kids and I decided that we should be pirates so we donned mustaches and hats and raised our pirate flag. We set out across the pond. I said pond because there was absolutely no wind. Not a ripple. We motored all the way to Sucia.
Upon arrival, we found a nice open spot and quickly set our anchor. Sucia was as crowded as I have ever seen it with more boats coming in all the time. Echo Bay is such an amazing spot because there always seems to be room for everyone. Jess has a fishing license and kids under 16 are essentially granted a license as well so Drew and Kylie got to work dropping crab rings over the side of the boat. They were quite successful and caught a lot of crab! Jess grilled some burgers and we had salad and burgers and enjoyed the night.
Saturday we took the crew to shore and explored the beaches. There was much exploring, playing and climbing to be done. Turns out that you can turn over a large rock on the beach and catch many small crabs that you can send off in a leaf boat. Sucia is a magical place. In Shallow Bay there are two main parts. One side is rocky and the other is a beautiful sandy beach. There is a cedar grove and sandstone caves. There was also a man (topless and drinking a beer) that was trying to convince everyone that there were dinosaur bones in the sandstone walls. It is a cute story, but a false one and I set about researching it so that it could be debunked. I am such a buzz kill. Sucia is cool enough that it doesn’t require embellishment.
A day of playing on the island gave way to devouring crab in the cockpit of the boat. It is always delightful to rip into some yummy, yummy crabbies and then just toss the remnants back to whence they came without a care. Easy clean up and no fishy smell in the trash. We have some games and coloring books on the boat so we were set up for the kids to entertain themselves. To my surprise they were enamored with our game of Poetry for Neanderthals. It is a game where you try to get your team to guess a word but you can only use single syllable words to describe it. “Game make you sound like man that live in cave. Hard game for smart kids, but kids do good job.”
When dinner time came Jess lit the BBQ grill and found out the hard way that when you try to cook 7 burgers on the grill the night before the grease collects and if it ignites you have a bonfire on your stern rail. Good thing that Jess keeps his cool under pressure because he was able to get the inferno taken care of without significant property damage. Once the fire burned out Jess got some chicken grilled for the crew and earned much in the way of praise for his cooking talents. Another fun day on the boat.
Sunday the Bender family had to drive back to Spokane so we left Sucia in the morning. We had very good luck because we had wind in the Strait of Georgia! And good wind too. We sailed upwind for a bit so that we could have some fun and then mostly downwind the rest of the way to the marina. Overall, it was a great sail with a smooth docking. The kids went home with a bunch of crab on ice and hopefully some great memories.
