As it turned out, she had to wait for the 6pm ferry to run as the first of the day! Her journey from our door to her own took thirteen hours to complete. Our drive back from Nanaimo was no better, as we were completely stopped twice due to multiple downed trees across the highway. At times we were being pelted with debris and dodging blowing Christmas trees. The drive took more than twice as long as usual, and we returned to find our front palm tree tipped sideways and our house without electricity. I hauled soil from the backyard, straightened the tree, and tried to reinforce it as much as possible The windstorm on December 20th ushered in winter. | After three nights, four movies, many meals, and a lot of visiting, it was time for June to head home. We discovered that the two early morning ferries had been cancelled, but received confirmation that the 10:40am ferry would sail, so we left our place at 9am. When we arrived at the Departure Bay ferry terminal at 10, they had just decided to cancel both the 10:40 and the 1pm sailings. With hours to kill, we ran some errands in Nanaimo until power outages began to occur. The mall was closed, but we had lunch at Costco. Lisa had a meeting scheduled in Duncan and ferry personnel said it still looked like the 3:20 ferry would leave on schedule, so we dropped June off at the ferry terminal. |
When we first moved to Honeymoon Bay in November 2014, we experienced a 50 hour power outage. This is our first winter in Cowichan Bay and we ended up being without power for 64 hours, including most of three cold nights. We spent much of two days in the CDMS office, where we had heat, wifi, a microwave, and the ability to make coffee. The red dots on the map above indicate areas affected by BC Hydro power outages due to the December 20th windstorm. |