Cowichan Bay

Today being Sunday we took a drive over the Malahat up to Cowichan Bay on the east side of Vancouver Island. It's a cute little bay with a marina and a road lined with waterfront cottages and funky restaurants.  

We stopped at a restaurant called Rock Fish Cafe, where we had some delicious Manhattan style clam chowder and salad and then walked down the dock to a Maritime Museum. It's built along a pier that you can see in the photo at the top of this post.






















This museum is a labour of love by people in the area who are wooden boat aficionados. Many elegant and historic rowboats are docked there. As well there's a marine ways where people can haul their boats up to repair them.

And inside the main building there's a workshop where volunteers work on ancient outboard motors, doing repairs the people then pay what they think the work is worth.





There's also a lovely old wooden boat that needs a ton of work and is for sale for $15,000 to anyone who will undertake to restore it where it sits. Maybe this could be your life's work?

Here's a lovely double ended rowboat that's in the museum. Isn't it beautiful? How I would love to have have place to moor this sweet little boat so I could take it out for a row in the harbour. But alas, my boating days are over.
























I'll leave you with a rather moody photo of the bay. Today was somewhat cloudy but by the time we got back to Victoria the sun was out in time to light up one of the pots of grasses in our back courtyard. Summer may be over but we still have some lovely warmth happening in Victoria.