-"Ladysmith Marina, this is Enfin. Echo November Foxtrott India November"
-"Enfin, this is Ladysmith Marina. Your assigned berth is C85"
-"Ladysmith Marina, Enfin. South of Charlie dock, cannot find C85"
-"Enfin, Ladysmith Marina. I can't see you. I believe you're at the wrong marina".....
And sure enough, I'd taken us to the wrong marina. As it turns out, there is a "Ladysmith Community Marina" and a "Ladysmith Marina". The two are distinct and separate. When we made our prompt reservation, and when we communicated with them, I never used the word "Community", and honestly completely missed the nuance.
No harm done, except to my ego, and within 5 minutes since the 2 marinas are practically adjacent we were in front of the correct C85.
A first for me though, and one I'll remember. Double check and triple check marina name!
Once there, it was an easy walk to downtown, so we filled our little fold-able trolley with produces and items we'd already consumed or hadn't found since Sidney.
Ladysmith was a nice place, with plenty of parks for Princess to run. close to the marina and and old walk-able downtown with a main street and nice shops and restaurants.
The marina was very pleasant, except for the basically useless internet -limited at 500MB per 6 hours- which doesn't even let you update a few machines, or update your electronic charts on the various machines and plotters. A typical chart update is just over 500MBs for the area I keep downloaded on my machines.
I understand poor internet from out of the way places, but Ladysmith is a good sized town on Victoria Island, close to Nanaimo. Not a distant, inaccessible place.
At least give me a reasonably priced paying option if you can't provide a good "free" (i.e. included in the mooring rate) option.
This isn't 2002 anymore and internet in marinas isn't a luxury anymore. It's become a necessity and I sure like to upgrade my charts without having to jump through hoops. Then get a few podcasts to stock up on programs to keep us entertained at anchor.
So a nice place it was, and convenient for short stays and shopping, but taken off our list for longer term stays.
It was good to stop for a couple nights. The forecast of 30 knots on the first night proved correct, so we were happy to have opted for the comfort of a dock.
From there we started our jump across the Georgia Strait refreshed and with Enfin fully stocked.