The West Coast!

Authors' note: Some of this is written by M, some by K, and some by both. Skilled readers may be able to tell the difference.

Leaving Victoria:

Free wireless internet cafes haven't quite made it to this corner of the world yet, so our updates will be a little infrequent for the rest of the Vancouver Island trip. We're currently in Port Desire (next to Bamfield) in Barkley Sound. But we should start off where we left off, with us being tourists in Victoria. We were only enticed into seeing one major attraction which was Miniature World. Somewhere on the order of 50 historical and fictional scenes, ranging from famous battlefields to Gulliver being tied up by the Lilliputians, had been recreated by some extremely patient folks. The smallest people in the scenes were maybe 5 millimeters tall and they all appeared to be different. A teacup was maybe the size of a fruitfly, but most definitely looked like a teacup. Mindboggleing! Other than that we just strolled around and tried to soak up some of the atmosphere in town. They are seemingly very proud of their British roots, and the city definitely had the most European air about it than any other West Coast City we have been to so far.

Our second thought after we pulled into our pimp slip as we arrived Victoria (after "Wow, this is AWESOME!), was "How on earth are we going to be able to pull out of here without trashing 3 other boats?" The nice lady who checked us in reassured us that they would only put boats behind us that were not staying as long as we did, ensuring a clear path for us to pull out. Well, wrong. We ended up with two boats rafted up behind us and had to arrange with them to move so we could get out. For some reason "4am" didn't seem like a good answer to the question of when we or were planning to leave, so instead we suggested bewteen 8 or 9. Since we got such a late start, we ruled out making it to Port San Juan, and instead planned for a relatively leisurely sail to Sooke Harbour 15 miles away.

Victoria to Sooke:

I had always pictured "adventurous" sailing as arriving after some ocean passage or another, into some exotic port, all sea-spray and wind as the boat surfs the waves under a reefed mainsail. I was only part right: the sea-spray and wind part. Adventurous sailing is motoring into 20+ knots wind with an opposing tide, creating steep choppy seas, while a Canadian warship conducts "towed sonar array" drills that require a kilometer's clearance. Aaa!!! He's heading right for us! Steer away, steer away! Wait, wait, he's turning through. Whew. Aaa!!! He's heading right for us! (and so on...)

And, well, need I even say it, in the afternoon we made only a couple knots, motoring full speed, as we fought the current into Sooke Harbour. We did actually get the sails up, but due to the current we spent a couple hours tacking back and forth across the Straits, not actually moving upwind.

Don't give up on us yet, though! I know we've been telling a lot of stories about not sailing well. Fortunately, I'm writing this a few days on, and I can say that things get better. Not just yet, though...

Sooke Harbour:

Lesson of Sooke Harbour: as a sailing vessel, beware any place that is known as a "mecca of sport-fishing". Some people think sport-fishing consists of catching fish. Actually, sport-fishing is the act of piloting a small powerboat at full speed through all sorts of narrow channels, coves, harbours, and such. Do they make sport-fishing boats with a throttle, or just a "go git 'em!" button?

Yes, for you Washington climbers out there, I guess I do sound a bit like Ira Spring. I'm griping a lot, and it wouldn't be quite fair to the Sooke-ese at this point, not to mention that we DID anchor more or less in the middle of the channel. There were only a couple places to anchor, as the harbour was shallow, but crab pots seemed to congregate in the most desireable anchorage. And for whatever reason we spent two nights at anchor here.

Sooke to Port San Juan:

The crew of Ho-Beaux had some difficulty selecting their departure time to Port San Juan. I's funny, on most vessels, the captain has ultimate say over the crew, but not so on this boat. We had a board meeting at midnight, then again at 3am and at 6am. Fog developing overnight was the main reason for the indecision rattling the captain and crew. After about 60 little powerboats had zipped by and the two other sailboats in the bay had lifted anchor, Ho-Beaux finally glided out of the harbour around 8:30am, still in the fog. Even so, we had a pretty good day on the water, making good speed motoring against no currents (!) until the wind picked up in the afternoon allowing us to complete the remaining 1/4 of the distance under sail. We found that we could make about 6 kts (4 kts vector upwind) in a 15 kts breeze. The boat was perfectly balanced in the smooth winds and more or less steered itself between tacks. The fog that was supposed to evaporate in the morning, turned out to stick around all day, which is why this boat carries 2 backup GPS units just in case. Port San Juan thankfully didn't live up to it's reputation of providing poor anchorage and captain and crew slept soundly the whole night for the first time while at anchor. We would have liked to stop by the supposedly large upscale pub supported by the tiny fishing community (and all the hikers on the West Coast Trail), but as in Sooke, we were not quite brave enough to leave Ho-Beaux alone at anchor.








Port San Juan to Bamfield (Port Desire):

Let's get the last bit of negativity out of the way, so we can start talking about the fun stuff. 8 hours motoring, zero wind. None. But big (2 meter) ocean swells nonetheless. Boat goes up, boat goes down. Boat goes up, boat goes down. Yup, fog too. Gray ocean, gray sky.

But wait, what is this? A tickle on my cheek. A ruffle in my hair. Is it... Is it not... Wind? Stop the boat. Yes, yes! Wind! Put the sails up!

And where there is wind, there is more wind. A breeze for an hour or so, becoming a blow. Wow! Remember what I was saying about ocean passages, exotic ports, all sea-spray and wind? Here it was! All the sails up, five knots, six, lulls in the troughs of the waves, gusts on the top, as the sails catch the wind and the boat surges. The fog is lifting, Cape Beale is in view, gnarly rocks and breaking waves at its foot. The Graveyard of the Pacific, they call this (no joke!). It blows even harder, now the boat seems to be overpowered, rushing down the waves and swerving. M takes the helm like a pro. "Steer 60 magnetic!" K clips his harness into the jacklines and goes up on the foredeck to douse the jib, as the boat passes the rocks at Cape Beale and heads up Trevor Channel. Another half-hour of beautiful sailing, 15-20 knots breeze up the channel, but the seas damped by the islets and headlands. Lush forest and sharp rocks, broken by small sand beaches. THAT was fun.

A bit of trivia about sailing in the Pacific Northwest... here's Commodore K's sailing outfit, in August: thermal underwear top and bottoms, rain pants, sailing boots, thermal vest, fleece sweater, life jacket, chest harness, foul-weather sailing jacket, warm beanie hat. And he's STILL a bit cold.

Bamfield:

Ever since Victoria, M had jokingly called Bamfield "Promised Land". Not only did our arrival to Barkley Sound represent the first real destination of the trip with its many secluded and undeveloped islands and coves (not to mention that the longest stretch of barren coastline with little protection was behind us), but Bamfield seemed like the place that would have a decent restaurant, a pub, laundry facilities, and a real SHOWER! The disappointment when we found that all the public floats in town were full and we ended up anchoring out another night (in Port Desire which is the next inlet over from Bamfield) was by no means little. Captain Karl took pity and rowed M the mile or so to town to find the nearest pub for a burger and a brew. And yes, the conditions in Port Desire were so benign that we actually dared to leave the boat. Disappoinment hit again when the first Bamfield-ian we talked to informed us that the pub in town is closed for renovation and that no, there's nothing else in town open at this hour (8pm). That's when it hits us how spoiled we are and even if seclusion is part of what we're here for, it is hard to give up your favorite comforts. The long row was not at all in vain. We ran into some old dock-neighbours from Elliott Bay Marina earlier that day at the fuel dock in Bamfield, Bob and Kris aboard Luna. We rowed by their boat and visited them for a while. They were just completing their Vancouver Island Circumnavigation, and had lots of good stories to share.

Bamfield is... idiosyncratic. The town straddles a small inlet, and one side isn't connected to the other. Folks get around by boat. There were a couple cars, but only a couple. The few roads were dirt. Many of the houses were accessed only by a boardwalk that ran along the harbour. It has a summer-resort cabin sort of feel, quaint little homes, but folks live here year-round, and there are only a few tourists. The pace of life is completely different, even in comparison to Port Townsend, which I thought was completely different from Seattle. (What's completely different times completely different?) To give an example, the one restaurant in town is open from 12-4pm, Thursday through Sunday. The Postmaster's desk has a little sticker saying "BRB", and he comes in five minutes later with a mug of coffee. But it's still first-world: the little general store sells Indian curry, Asian foods, Mexican peppers, fresh vegetables, fine liquors. There's a government marine research facility at the harbour entrance.

There's a really cool beach, Brady's Beach, a short walk from town. Supposedly it is the most-photographed beach on the West Coast of Vancouver Island. The two things that made it stand out from your run-of-the-mill beach were, first, the forest-capped sea stacks; and second, the abundance of marine life in the tidal zones. Millions of clams, mussles, and barnacles, big clumps of orange and purple starfish piled on top of each other, and little shrimp-eating (?) anemones.

In the next day or so, we plan to leave for a more secluded anchorage in the Broken Group, a series of small islands in the middle of Barkley Sound. No blog posts from there. Check back in a few days, as we will be visiting Ucluelet, a town on the other side of the Sound.