Port McNeill To Stock Up On Supplies and Do Laundry

Marina at Port McNeill For Supplies & Laundry – With a “Boil Water” Notice in Effect –

If spending more than a few days or weeks in the Broughtons, most boaters, especially those with small boats, will need to visit Port McNeill at some point. Situated at the northern end of Vancouver Island, Port McNeill is a small town within reasonable reach for boaters cruising the Broughton Islands. We were running out of water and food, especially fresh produce, and since we had been cruising for about a month now from Anacortes, we had to do our laundry.

We needed to fill both our tanks (34 gal and 14 gal) and all six of the 5-gal jugs we brought with us for this trip. There are very few marinas in the Broughton Archipelago, and most of them only have nonpotable, cedar water available to boaters. We have two refrigerators on board, and at this point, they were fairly empty.

We stayed two nights at the marina, doing our laundry the first day and the next morning, and grocery shopping the afternoon of the second day. Yes, we had that much laundry, and both days the laundromat was very busy. Since it had been so rainy and damp for several weeks, we washed everything washable on the boat.

This is one town where you will see people, mostly boaters from the marina, carrying loads of laundry to or from the laundromat or grocery store in grocery carts. People can borrow the carts to take groceries down the hill to the marina. If you can find one sitting up at the top of the ramp at the marina to cart your laundry to the laundromat. No problem, help yourself!

Not so funny story…

Shortly after we got tied up to the dock, we saw the “Boil Water” notice at the marina office. Not a good sign for boaters heading into the Broughtons for possibly weeks at a time. We were relying on this fresh water supply to see us through three weeks of cruising in the islands.

Jim and I had a system in place to use our fresh water sparingly, just for drinking and cooking, while slowly replacing the jug’s contents as they emptied, with cedar water and use that for bathing and washing dishes, saving the good water in our tanks. We didn’t want to fill our tanks with cedar water. If you’ve seen a filter that has processed cedar water through, you would not want the accumulation of slimy green ooze in your boat’s tank either.

As we were shopping in the produce section…

I noticed all the veggies that are normally sprayed with water all day were bone dry, and some were quite wilted. So, the tainted water was also going to affect the quality of the produce we take with us from Port McNeill as well. It looked like we would have to rely on the very small selection (sometimes that means just a small box of veggies to choose from) of produce offered at the small marinas.

We talked with several people to find out what was going on with the water at the marina. We got good intel from one of the checkout clerks at the grocery store about the timeline and current treatment.

The situation had been going on for about a week. They had been flushing the lines and treating the water. We were concerned! We were counting on refilling our tanks and jugs just before we left the next day. Jim heard that the water samples looked much better, but they would still do one more treatment, but they had not yet tested it before our planned departure. We were all done with our maintenance and chores and didn’t want to spend another day at the marina. Not sure what else to do but fill our tanks and hope the last treatment worked.

We are happy to report that the water was fine. We survived!

First Butter Tarts in Canada this trip!

Sister ships (above)!