We were huddled in the Foreshoreman's office at the Royal Victoria Yacht Club, filling out a reciprocal moorage registration form. Heather, my new wife and WYC's reciprocal moorage chairperson, got stuck on one of the questions and asked me for help.

"What day of the week is it?" she needed to know.

"I have no idea!" I replied, smirking. I was pleased, because I knew that true cruising begins when we forget what day of the week it is.

With the foreshoreman's help we finished filling out the paperwork and walked over to the yacht club bar to get a gate key from the barkeep. Though reciprocal moorage is free, the key deposit was $10 Canadian. The barkeep was more than happy to accept our more valuable US ten dollar bill. We weren't sure what nation's currency we'd get back when we returned the key.

As we walked back to our tiny boat "New Salt", I rifled through the sheaf of paperwork and receipts RVYC gave us. One page in particular caught my eye. It explained all of the available facilities at the Yacht Club, a huge list including formal banquet rooms, a boat crane, a full service pub, and their own private Canadian customs clearance service. At the bottom of the list it apologized for the "limited services available to their guests". I wonder what else they thought they ought to be providing, maybe free diesel fuel and a new bottom paint job too?

We left the next day, after getting our key deposit back from one of their fulltime office clerks, and set sail for downtown Victoria. Sailing from RVYC to Victoria requires a transit of Oak Bay, a rock and buoy strewn waterway. We discovered that there was an excellent chart of the bay published by the Canadian Hydrographic Service, but incredibly that was one of the two charts from Cape Scott BC to 400 miles south in Olympia that we don't own.

Anybody who knows me and Heather knows that we love nautical charts. We carry charts of Lake Washington. We have a large scale chart of Elliott Bay where you can count the individual spokes of the Kingdome (oops, that chart is kind of out of date). We have a chart of a remote inlet on Vancouver Island's west side with depths last surveyed in 1852 ("verifyed by leade line" it says in the corner, and the numbers and place names written on the chart are in the original ye olde cursive handwriting). We spent over $500 on charts at Armchair Sailor last year, earning their much coveted "customer who paid our next month's rent" award. But we somehow overlooked the Canadian Oak Bay chart. It might have had something to do with last year's cruising theme - "is it possible to spend 4 months sailing in Canada and NOT go to Victoria?" - the answer is yes, by the way.

So we squinted at some small scale charts of Oak Bay, closely followed some larger boats headed the same direction, and finally made it to open sea. As we entered Victoria Harbor we had a new experience - since we cleared Canadian Customs days ago we didn't have to clear customs in Victoria, so we boated right up to a slip in front of the Empress Hotel.

I was eager to show Heather my "insiders knowledge" of Victoria, by showing her which obscure building three blocks away was the building where you pay for Empress moorage. But when we got to the tiny hidden away building we learned that the payment procedures in Victoria are all different now, and a lot simpler. A helpful federal Canadian employee explained it all to us. The first step now is go shopping. The second step is to put money in the envelope that magically appears on your boat while you are away. The third step is to put the envelope in the box at the top of the dock ramp. So much for me being a big shot city slicker and impressing my wife with my insider's knowledge.

In Victoria we shopped till we dropped. We bought Canadian current tables, we bought motor oil, we bought spicy peanut sauce, we bought scented oils and bath perfumes and other girl stuff at Heather's favorite Victoria cosmetics shop (I guess her knowledge of Victoria is better than mine), we bought fruit smoothies, and we returned to New Salt laden with four full shopping bags containing everything we ever wanted. Except the damn Oak Bay chart.

The local marine chandlery had six lovely charts of San Francisco Bay, but none of the dangerous bay right around the corner. This being Victoria, the provincial capital of all of all of British Columbia (why can't the US send all of it's politicians to a remote rainy island too?) we marched into the Government Printing Office and demanded they print us a copy of the Oak Bay chart. Our demands came to nought, but the friendly government official told me they were expecting a new set of charts on Friday.

"Really?" I asked, my eyes lighting up. "Hey Heather!", I called across the dusty printing office, "This guy says he can get us the Oak Bay chart, if we stay in Victoria until Friday."

"Cool" she said, trying to work out what this would mean for provisioning issues, tidal currents, how much Canadian money we had, etc. "So what is today's day?"

"I have no idea" I smirked.