trip logs

We’ve been having a swell time, just meandering around here in Barkley. This is the farthest south we’ll go on the west coast of Vancouver Island; when we sail out of these protected waters next weekend we’ll be pointing our bow south to California.

These are our last days here in the Pacific Northwest and we are savoring each one. Our agenda has been only to enjoy ourselves and do whatever and go wherever sounds right at the time. It feels rather like a vacation. When the morning fog burns off each day the sky is brilliant blue but with that slightly angled gold-tinged light that tells you summer is waning even though it still is warm. The air, sea and land is so pristine here. Even though Barkley is the busiest place we’ve been on the west coast, nature still rules by a huge margin here. We know we will miss it.

On Effingham Island we scrambled up and down a rough trail through ancient forest to the opposite side from our anchorage. On the beach, we clambered over huge beachball sized pebbles until we found the sea cave. The tide was coming in when we found it but we waded through between waves until we were inside and in awe at the delicate ferns dangling from the rock overhead and took a quick peek deep inside the damp rock. Minutes later we were hustling to wade out again in the rising water so we wouldn’t be trapped inside for the night.

The next day we sailed over to Bamfield where we walked up and down the waterfront boardwalk countless times. To the girls it must have seemed like a lifesize Candyland game: paths lined with pennies, buttons and keys, a tree tunnel with artfully painted mushrooms peeking out from the ferns and salal, a feral cat neighborhood and at the very end of the quaint flower-boxed boardwalk a grocery store serving up the biggest scoops of ice-cream we’d encountered yet.

We also took a field trip to the fantastic Bamfield Marine Sciences Center, a world-class marine biology campus. They have a variety of aquariums and touchpools full of local animals the girls really enjoyed. I think the highlight was coming across some students with a small octopus they were about to return to its local home. Leah was enthralled. As we were walking back from the center I realized that I may as well call our first day of boatschool a success.

After playing on gorgeously sandy Brady’s Beach near Bamfield yesterday morning we sailed back across to the Brokens and plopped our anchor down yesterday evening off quiet Nettle Island. As we were eating dinner the fog crept back in and covered us with a huge thick soft blanket and we were glad to be snug in our absolutely still cove. Even the normally rowdy resident sea lions were sailing around the anchorage on their backs with their flippers in the air barely making a sound.

Around 3 am Michael and I were both awoken by the sound of gravel being hurled at the keel of our boat. That was odd, we thought, and went up on deck to look around. The darkest night air above us was still hazy with fog and what we saw below us was something from another world: there was a brilliant florescent green ring undulating around our boat in a nearly perfect circle. Every once in a while cannons of bright green light would come at it and the ring would split apart and veer off in different swirling directions, including right at our boat. The wavering glowing rivers of green would eventually rejoin and the glowing circle of fish around our boat would form again and again. It was like looking down and watching the northern lights. The bark of the feeding sea lions clued us in to the phosphorescent magic we were witnessing.

We had planned on moving on today to Joe’s Bay a few miles away but we couldn’t seem to lift the anchor. The dinghy is still on the foredeck and we’ve enjoyed a day of just puttering around onboard. Reading books to the girls, coloring, playing with toys, making cookies, baking bread, listening in to VHF conversations, completing a few tinkering jobs, listening to songs played randomly on our ipod.

Enjoying our little vacation before the work of traveling south begins again.

—
posted via HAM radio (www.winlink.org)

As I type this, Michael is somewhere in the dinghy in the Broken Group in Barkley Sound towing our friends on Madrone (www.tidalpool.org) towards Ucluelet. When they asked if we’d consider giving them a tow out of Effingham Bay we didn’t even think twice and filled up the outboard’s gas tank.

Let me back up a bit. I’d first spotted Madrone, a spritely little Rawson 30 ketch, in Port Hardy. At that point, we’d begun to look at boats and think: “Are they going around?” wondering if we’d spot a boat again on the west coast of the island. I didn’t get the chance to ask the crew of Madrone in person then but did when we saw them again in Bull Harbour. It was there that we found out this intriguing couple was moving from Portland to San Francisco in their boat, and decided to go around Vancouver Island along the way.

We shared another anchorage, and an evening of ceviche and cocktails, near Winter Harbour and buddy boated around Brooks Peninsula. It wasn’t until we came into Hot Springs Cove though that we saw our new friends again. The Madrone crew waved to us as we were setting our hook. We also exchanged waves with another boat, Got ‘d Fever (www.llcruise.blogspot.com) who we’d met in the Bunsbys and shared a wonderful afternoon of tea and cookies with.

That feeling, of coming into an anchorage and seeing familiar boats, of being welcomed into a new place with a familiar wave, is one of my favorite parts about this life. It’s been years since we’ve experienced that special camaraderie that grows among cruisers in a foreign land, or at least a rugged challenging coast off the vacation track and it’s been a treat to find it out here again.

Perhaps it’s the sense of accomplishment that brings us together. It’s also the challenges that we’ve faced out here and getting to know other boats, quickly, means having a familiar voice over the VHF should you need help. Mostly, I think, it’s that anyone willing to live and travel on a small boat for weeks and months on end is just bound to be plain old interesting and I never get tired of meeting the characters out here.

So we make friends quickly and as friends do, we help each other out without question. Anchored in Effingham Bay in the Broken Group, Michael helped Matt on Madrone install their repaired starter motor (which turned out to not be repaired at all). Madrone decided they’d sail their boat to Ucluelet to hopefully get their engine started once and for all but needed a little help getting through the narrow entrance to the bay. No problem. It’s what our community does for each other.

With favorable NW winds in the forecast, we headed south again after relaxing for two days in North Harbour, Quatsino Sound. We had an uneventful rounding of the Brooks Peninsula, which can be a treacherous passage we’ve heard. For us, it was a motorboat ride which sure beat the alternative. The sky cleared as we rounded the cape and we marveled at the untouched miles and miles of green mountains making up the peninsula park.

Our guidebooks all agreed that the little island group, the Bunsbys, tucked underneath the Brooks Peninsula and snuggled up next to the mainland were not to be missed. After weaving in through the many rocks and reefs guarding these forested little jewels we made our way to the fully protected main anchorage, Scow Bay on Big Bunsby.

After setting our anchor in the 60′ deep anchorage, we turned off the motor and listened to: absolutely nothing. Tucked away between the Pacific Ocean and miles and miles of protected forests it was absolutely still. After listening for a while, we could make out the sound of a bald eagle calling out in the distance.

Once the girls were tucked in bed, Michael and I sat out in the cockpit enjoying the last of our Trader Joe’s wine. We watched the sun set over the Brooks mountains. It was a stunning show with the day’s last beams spilling down from low clouds that had settled between the peaks. Orange and yellow and pink and finally blue.

The light was dim and Michael heard a rustling sound on the shoreline just in front of our bow. We both strained our eyes to see what was making the noise and gaped in awe as a huge black shape emerged from the bushes. For the next 15 minutes we watched the enormous black bear stroll along the shore, reaching on his or her hind legs to grab juicy thimbleberries off the highest branches and sniffing amongst the rocks for other morsels.

There are no trails on the Bunsbys, which was just fine by me. We spent hours trolling slowly along in our dinghy exploring hidden lagoons and nooks, marveling at some of the most amazing rock sculptures we’d ever seen. We gazed into crystal clear tide pools teaming with life: hermit crabs, seastars, fluorescent green anemones, small fish, crabs fighting for space in the smallest pools. We explored little pocket beaches, the girls finding favorite seashells and bits of glowing seaglass in the sand. Every now and then we’d spot a sea otter popping their head up out of the water to peek at us, guests in their wilderness.

We did it. Yesterday we departed our northernmost anchorage, Bull Harbour, traversed the Nahwitti Bar leaving our protected inland waters behind and entered the Pacific Ocean. We rounded Cape Scott, making the Big Left Turn. We sailed in the promised brisk northwesterlies, wing on wing for hours, due south. As we watched the west coast of Vancouver Island pass by on our port side, and the endless Pacific Ocean to starboard, we couldn’t stop grinning at accomplishing the biggest challenge of our journey so far.

Two days ago we sat in the still waters of Bull Harbour on Hope Island. Fitting, we thought, that Hope Island would begin and end our journey northward. To get in, you motor through a twisty deep channel and end up in a lovely landlocked bay. Normally we would have relished such a spot and stayed for days on end enjoying the nearby trails and tidepools, and on the other side of the island via a short hike through cool mossy woods, an ocean beach with brilliant blue waves pounding the rock strewn shoreline. No, we were too anxious about the next upcoming leg of our trip, rounding notorious Cape Scott and finally, finally sailing in the Pacific again and eager to move on.

We put everything away below that might get tossed to the cabin floor in the ocean swells. We tied the jacklines on deck, fitted the girls’ new harnesses on. The liferaft got strapped to the wheel pedestal in the cockpit. Water and fuel jugs and miscellaneous gear strapped down on the aft deck. When we went to bed the boat was as ready as she’d ever be. We’d talked with the girls about what the next day would be like, rocking and rolling in the ocean swells like they’d never felt before. (“Like a big powerboat wake?” asks Leah. “Exactly! Except over and over….”) Ourselves however, were a swell of emotions – anxiety, excitement, dread, giddiness. I woke up at 4 am in a cold sweat and pounding heart, imaging huge freak waves overtaking us as we attempted to cross the Nahwitti bar, our first obstacle.

Morning came and we motored away from Bull Harbour in glassy calm waters under a dreary gray sky. We arrived at the bar just as the flood was ending and motored across it like any other body of water, except for the Pacific swells that we were now riding up, down, up and down. The wind remained calm as we motored across to Cape Scott but the NW swells were mixing with the westerly ebb now, and we bounced around for hours in confused triangular seas. Not dangerous, just nauseating. The girls stayed in bed too long and by the time we got them strapped into the cockpit with us they were green. Sadly, our pink vomiting tub was called for that morning by our youngest crew.

Around 11 am we reached Scott Channel, still motoring in less than 5 knots of wind. As we turned left with the ebbing sea, the motion calmed down as we, the swell and the water were running south together. The girls had fallen asleep in the cockpit earlier snuggled in their blankets and in the calmer motion Leah awoke and exclaimed: “That’s much better!” Holly was soon awake and they were bouncing around the cockpit wearing their new offshore harnesses like it was any other day at sea. All was well again onboard.

About an hour later we could feel small puffs of wind at our backs, then it slowly got stronger until it was the NW wind we’d been promised. Real Wind. We unfurled the genoa to starboard, prevented the main to port and sailed for the next five hours like that, wing on wing. “We are like a butterfly!” Holly noticed. The wind built until little whitecaps appeared all around us, almost glowing in the blue sea. We’d left the clouds behind and were surrounded by bright blue sky and sun. We glided down the waves, Wondertime rocking slightly back and forth as the swells rolled under us. The perfect magic carpet ride.

We rolled right into Quatsino Sound, then found our first anchorage at North Harbour outside of the tiny fishing outpost of Winter Harbour. We were the only boat. Just us, mountains of old growth trees, water, sky and our satisfaction of a journey well made.