The island's lure: 3

(HERE IS the third and final part of the story that started last Monday about a sailboat trip my wife June and I did some years back in a Cape Dory 25D called Jabula. The article was first published in Cruising World magazine.)

The Lure of Vancouver Island: Part 3

WE LEFT SEA OTTER COVE the next day in high spirits. The day was beautiful, with a clear blue sky and a calm sea. We were over the worst, and we could look forward to two more weeks of exploring the five major inlets on Vancouver Island’s west coast.

We saw bears at Winter Harbour and Checleset Bay, and dozens of eagles fighting like seagulls over scraps of salmon in Barkley Sound. In almost every little anchorage we came to we were greeted by a bald eagle. We came across sea otters in the remote Bunsby Islands, including one a mile out to sea that stayed fast asleep as we approached, and then peered at us quizzically through his flippers as we passed by. We greeted Gray whales and Humpbacks as if they were old friends.

We bathed in natural hot springs in Clayoquot Sound and rowed ashore on remote islands to visit the sites of ancient Indian villages. We walked through dense old-growth forest on the untamed Brooks Peninsula to a sandy beach as white and pretty as we’d ever seen anywhere and sat to have sandwiches in the shade of a gnarled madrona while green-blue water rushed in and out of a rocky cove below us. Patches of soft grass spread over the rocks like blankets, and in every sheltered spot the ground bloomed with wild bluebells and buttercups.

We ran under jib only at three knots, dragging a lure to catch fish, and feasted like royalty on grilled salmon and white wine in the warm cockpit.

Day after day, we worked our way south and east, occasionally finding another cruising boat in a quiet anchorage and making new friends. In Barkley Sound we met up again with Wind Song and Pyreneenne. We swapped yarns like long-lost pals. Burl Romick of Wind Song gave us a bucket of oysters he’d gathered in the nearby Brabant Islands, and Stuart Briscoe of Pyreneenne served up delicious gravlox they’d made from salmon they’d caught.

But our days in paradise were numbered. June had to get back to work, so reluctantly we set off on the long crossing to Neah Bay, Washington, across the wide mouth of the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

There was a small-craft warning in effect, and it blew hard from the northwest that afternoon. Little Jabula broad-reached down the long swells, occasionally touching 7 knots, which made steering very difficult. Tokoloshe surfed along quite happily at the end of a 75-foot painter that formed a loop and slowed it down when it started to run into us.

For most of the day there was no sign of land ahead, but in the late afternoon we raised Cape Flattery and Tatoosh Island. When the wind got up to about 30 knots in the gusts, I dropped the mainsail, leaving the working jib in place. It hardly made any difference to our speed, but it certainly made steering a lot easier.

The tide turned a couple of hours before we reached Neah Bay. It started running against the wind, which made the waves rough and steep-sided for our final approach. We were very glad when we eventually tied up in the Makah marina and cleared customs by phone. Cold and tired, we declined an invitation to drinks on another boat, had a supper of good, hot soup, and collapsed in our bunks.

We ran into patchy fog the next day, but when it cleared the rest was easy. In bright sunshine, we motored non-stop over glassy swells to Bowman Bay, where we crossed our outward track. Safely anchored in the beautiful state park just after sundown, we celebrated Jabula’s circumnavigation of Vancouver Island with a good hot meal and drinks in the cockpit.

Next day, as we were waiting for slack water at Deception Pass, two tugs came along with a huge log raft. They halted near us and I read their names--Vulcan and Snee-oosh.

“You won’t believe this,” I said to June, “but when I started out, right at the beginning of the trip, these same two tugs were in exactly this same spot with a log raft, waiting for slack water in the pass.”

“Oh, I believe it,” said June. “It’s just another circle closing.”

It was a glorious day for our homecoming. We caught the new flood through the pass and carried it all the way down the Saratoga Passage to our berth in Oak Harbor marina.

There we sat in the cockpit and looked at each other, listening to the engine idling:

Quite a trip, yes, quite a trip,

Saw the eagles, saw the bears,

Saw the orcas, saw the whales,

Saw the islands, saw some gales,

At four knots plus, all thanks to me,

Four knots plus, all thanks to me ...

Good to be back, good to rest

Good to be at home at last ...

            Good to be . . .

I pulled the stop control out and the little Yanmar gurgled to a halt.

“Chatty little guy,” I remarked. “But a bit swollen headed.”

“He has a right to be,” said June. “He’s a Vancouver Island vet now.”

Today's Thought

We are all sailors on the spaceship Earth.
—Frank Braynard.

Tailpiece

“Is it true that the trouble with this country is ignorance and apathy?”
“I don’t know — and what’s more I don’t give a damn.”

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

The island's lure: 2

(HERE IS the continuation of the story that started last Monday about a sailboat trip my wife June and I did some years back in a Cape Dory 25D called Jabula. The article was first published in Cruising World magazine.)

The Lure of Vancouver Island: Part 2

WE DUCKED INTO snug Bull Harbour to wait for calm winds and a slack tide. There, in our northernmost anchorage, we joined three other bigger yachts intending to run down the west coast.

The northwester came rushing in over a low spit of land and whipped up the waters of the anchorage. Bent over against the wind, we walked along a little dirt road bounded by high hedgerows bursting with blackberries, salmonberries and strange berries we’d have liked to taste but didn’t dare. We met a Native American man and requested, belatedly, permission to come ashore, for this is First Nations territory. He smiled and told us to make ourselves at home. We soon came to Roller Bay and watched high surf storming in from thousands of miles of open Pacific, pounding the shoreline and throwing up a thick salty haze. It was majestic, but a little scary, too.

Back in the anchorage, we were invited to join Burl and Abigail Romick aboard their C&C 35, Wind Song, for coffee after supper. Burl, a retired engineer from Portland, Oregon, asked: “Does your dinghy fit on board?”

“No,” I said. “We’re going to tow it.”

“Across Nahwitti Bar? It can get very rough.” The Romicks had been this way before.

“I have a secret weapon,” I said smugly. “You haven’t seen it yet.”

While I’d been waiting for June to join me, I’d made a spray cover for Tokoloshe out of a cheap blue poly tarp and a length of shock cord. It was the first cover I’d ever made, and I’ll admit it was a bit short in the front and a little lopsided, but it would surely keep the dinghy dry and buoyant even if waves rolled right over it.

I lay below wide awake that night, listening to the wind howling in the rigging, and calculating my worry factor by the number of flaps per second from the stern-mounted ensign. Flutter-flip-flip-flap-flap was bad. I got up to check my anchor bearings, but the holding was good. We didn’t drag.

The gale lasted three days. We rowed over to visit Stuart and Pip Briscoe aboard Pyreneenne, a 41-foot Jeanneau sloop from Sidney, B.C. They were sailing around the island with their daughters Kate, 7, and Lizzie, 3.

They’d been listening to reports from fishing boats at Cape Scott describing 12-foot seas.

“I don’t care, I’m leaving tomorrow, come hell or high water,” Stuart announced. He spoke in the desperate manner of a man who’d been cooped up with bouncy kids for too long. 

“So am I,” I said.

That evening, I tried Tokoloshe’s new spray cover. It was difficult to fit it from Jabula’s cockpit. I stretched out and managed to roll the shock cord over Tokoloshe’s gunwale. I pulled the cover forward as far as it would go. I let the dinghy ride aft on the painter again and looked at my handiwork with some pride.

Then a heavy gust of wind came along. In the flicker of an eyelid, the two sides of the cover sprang up over the gunwales and contracted themselves into a fat sausage along Tokoloshe’s centerline.

June almost choked with laughter. I could have bitten her.

I ripped off the cover and hurled it into Jabula’s cockpit. “The dinghy will just have to take its chances,” I said grumpily.

That night, a change in wind speed woke me up. The ensign was lazily going kerflap ... pause ... kerflap. I turned over happily and went back to sleep.

The next morning was misty and cold. As we approached Nahwitti Bar under mainsail and motor we could see breaking water ahead--whitecaps on the top of standing waves. The current was still flowing seaward at about 4 knots, and we were soon sucked into it. For 45 minutes, Jabula stood on her head in short, steep seas. June chocked herself into a corner of the cockpit and clung on tightly.

A large fishing boat, a dragger, passed us slowly to port, plunging her bows through the steep swells rolling in from the Pacific, and sending heavy spray high over her bridge.

I didn’t dare look back as I wrestled with the tiller. “How’s the dinghy doing?” I asked June.

“Still afloat,” she reported. “Rolling like mad, but so far, so good.”

When we came to buoy “MA,” marking the end of the shallow bar, the seas gradually lengthened and flattened. We pulled Tokoloshe alongside to bail it out. To our astonishment, it was almost bone dry.

“Doesn’t need a cover after all,” I observed.

“Just as well,” said June, trying not to giggle.

The wind was fitful that morning and came at us from all directions as we motor-sailed slowly toward Cape Scott against a 2-knot current. Wind Song and Pyreneenne passed us at about 1 p.m. and disappeared ahead, flying down the coast with the new ebb.

Strong currents seemed to change direction every few minutes as we rounded Cape Scott at a respectable distance. Although the weather was calm, the waters around the green-gray, sinister-looking cape were restless, sometimes rearing up suddenly as a swell rode in from seaward, then flattening out again in another swirl of current. Jabula’s constant tugs at the helm made steering tiring, so June and I took one-hour shifts, anxiously watching the GPS and correcting all the time for sideways sets.

Then, to our great relief, we were free of the notorious cape and in deep water once again. We laid a course for Sea Otter Cove, the first fully protected harbor down the coast. It’s only about nine miles from Cape Scott, but the going seemed very slow, perhaps because we were emotionally drained. The engine’s chattering became more obtrusive, specially as it seemed to be talking about us:

Such fun today, such fun today,

We crossed a breaking bar today,
We passed a dangerous cape today,
And they were scared,
They were scared,
I could tell, I could tell.
Not far to go
Now thankfully,
Not far for them, not far for me . . .

It wasn’t far, but the landfall was difficult. The entrance to Sea Otter Cove is very narrow and hidden among rugged islands, none of which look like their outlines on the chart. We couldn’t see any sign of the rock-and-reef-strewn entrance to the deserted cove until we were within 100 yards of it.

But eventually we made our way in and found ourselves in sole possession of a beautiful, perfectly protected bay fringed with evergreens and sandy beaches. We lay back with drinks in the cockpit to soak up the evening sunshine.    The sun was putting on a spectacular show of oranges and purples.

“This is simply gorgeous,” I said.

“It’s our reward for a hard day,” said June. “It’s always better when you’ve had to work for it.”

Tokoloshe misbehaved during the night, jamming the painter between the rudder and the keel. For a while I feared I might have to dive into the icy water to free it, but I found to my great relief that I could pull the loose end through after untying the stopper knot. I tied Tokoloshe firmly alongside to stop any further nonsense.

Today's Thought

Life ought to be a struggle of desire toward adventures whose nobility will fertilize the soul.
— Rebecca West

Tailpiece

“Mommy, Mommy, come quick, there’s a spider as big as a house.”
“Oh for goodness’ sake, Johnny, haven’t I told you 20 million times not to exaggerate?”

(Coming Friday: The third and final episode of The Lure of Vancouver Island)

The island's lure

Our former 25-foot Cape Dory

THIS IS THE TIME of the year when a handful of intrepid boaters in Washington state and Oregon start planning for a summer circumnavigation of Vancouver Island. It's a big island, about 250 miles long, and it sits, beckoning, just over the U.S. border, separated from the Canadian mainland on the east by narrow, protected channels of salt water, and open on its untamed west side to the boisterous Pacific Ocean.

Not many boats do the circumnavigation. It's more dangerous and more complicated than a trip up the Inside Passage to Alaska because of the lack of facilities on the western coast and because the rugged coastline, exposed to swells with a fetch of thousands of miles, and battered by long series of low-pressure systems spinning down from the Gulf of Alaska, offers limited shelter and calls for careful navigation.

The cruising guides are full of warnings about the dangers involved for small boats, but I have done the trip twice — a fact that reveals that anyone of normal intelligence (that is, somewhat more than mine) and boating skills is capable of sailing around Vancouver Island. I'm sure a lot more sailors would do it, were it not for one thing: it takes time; and people are more wary than ever about taking time off from work in these days of economic uncertainty.

However, for those with the ambition and the time, I thought it might be useful if I repeated an article I wrote for Cruising World magazine about 12 years ago. Nothing much has changed on the island, certainly on the western side, since then. Because the article is much longer than my normal columns, I have split it up into three parts.

Here is THE LURE OF VANCOUVER ISLAND Part 1:

TWO MILES OFF the deserted west coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, the wind had died and the auxiliary engine was chattering away to itself as we headed southeast in long low swells from astern.

“What’s it saying now?” I asked my wife, June. She’s my translator.

We first learned about engine talk from Jonathan Raban’s book, Coasting. Raban, a famed British literary author now living in Seattle, once sailed singlehanded around England. Whereas Raban’s engine lived deep in the boat beneath him, and sounded like “an indignant old fool, grumbling in the cellar,” our little Yanmar diesel was a babbler, a constant presence in the cockpit. Hunkered down right under our feet, it kept up a running commentary in a two-note baritone. Like a workman settled in to a long job, it passed comments to while the time away, not much impressed by anything and not at all concerned about repeating itself.

I have never been able to understand it, but June can. She translated:

No whales this morning,

No otters this morning,

No sun this morning,

Just gulls this morning

And the ducks, and the ducks

A few small ducks ...

No whales this morning . . .

Well, no exaggeration there. It had certainly been a quiet start to the day, the 34th day of our circumnavigation of the island aboard our Cape Dory 25D, Jabula. But many summer days in the Pacific Northwest are like that.

They start off gray and cool, and then gradually keep on improving until they’re just about perfect.

And so it was with this day. Just an hour or so later, a big helicopter appeared over the land. We were astounded. The coast here was wilderness. We hadn’t seen a plane, or even a car or truck, in a week. It landed on a beach, and then took off again, and circled, finally disappearing into the salt haze down the coast. We couldn’t begin to imagine what it was doing.

And that was just the start. Next, an eagle flew out from the land across our bow, straight out to sea, headed for goodness knows where. We’d never seen that happen before.

Then there were whales, four or five Humpbacks inland of us, over to port, blowing and raising their flukes. One spyhopped for us and showed us his belly. Quite a morning for excitement, we thought.

But it was all much the same to our cynical engine: 

Helicopter, helicopter,

Eagle, eagle, eagle

And whales and whales and whales,

Whales after all this morning

But still no sun, still no sun . . .

“It's like one of those people who like to verify the existence of things by saying their names,” June explained.

“I just wish it would whisper, not shout,” I said.

“Never mind,” said June. “Look — here comes the sun.”

Vancouver Island sticks out from mainland British Columbia like a detached right thumb. It runs southeast and northwest for about 250 nautical miles, and its western coast, wide open to the restless North Pacific, is one of North America’s last wild frontiers. It’s almost all forest and mountain wilderness, with five major indentations that form spectacular fjords, sounds, and bays filled with countless little uninhabited islands. From white sandy beaches, steep mountains push up high to a central, snowcapped ridge.

Very few roads penetrate the stark beauty of this deeply fissured wilderness. This is still the domain of the tall conifer and the sinuous madrona, the eagle, the bear, the salmon, the otter, and the orca.   

Like many other Puget Sound sailors, June and I were lured by this large island just across the Canadian border. We found its appeal almost irresistible. But the clincher was that you could circumnavigate it. Circles have always fascinated us. There’s something quite magical about setting out to explore new places, and traveling onward, ever onward, never passing the same place twice, and then ending up safe and sound at your starting point.

We knew, however, that comparatively few yachts have sailed all the way around the island. That fact first came to our attention when we saw advertisements in which a boat was referred to proudly as a “Vancouver Island vet,” and, in the shorthand of the yachting world, therefore presumably very seaworthy and desirable.

Time is a big problem for many people. You need six weeks or more to do the trip properly. Thick coastal fog during the summer months is another problem. And then there are big tidal ranges, fast currents, whirlpools, narrows, races, and bars where the current reaches 8 knots or more.

There’s also Cape Scott, the bleak northwestern tip of the island. Currents flowing along both sides of the island collide at Cape Scott and produce heavy seas and overfalls dangerous to small craft when the wind opposes them. The cruising guides aren’t encouraging. “It is reported that even in calm conditions seas can emerge seemingly from nowhere,” warns Robert Hale, publisher of the well-respected Waggoner Cruising Guide. “Cape Scott’s seas have capsized and sunk substantial vessels. If you find yourself in trouble off Cape Scott, you are in trouble.” Another well-known guide, Northwest Boat Travel, notes that a circumnavigation of Vancouver Island is “a shorter trip than the Inside Passage to Skagway and Glacier Bay, Alaska, but in several ways more difficult and more dangerous.”

In the end, the lure of the island was too great. We had to go. We decided it would be all right if we were very cautious.

But there was still the dinghy problem. Our dinghy, Tokoloshe, was an old 10-foot, fiberglass, outboard fishing skiff — a most unconventional dinghy for a 25-foot cruising sailboat. Nobody with any sense would tow a dinghy like that for 250 miles in the open Pacific. Or would they? We didn’t have much option. It was our only dinghy, and it wouldn’t fit on board.

And so, on an overcast morning in mid-June, I steered Jabula down the winding channel outside her home port of Oak Harbor, Whidbey Island, headed for the Canadian border. For three weeks, I singlehanded her north and west along the Inside Passage until June could fly up to join me at Port Hardy, the last vestige of civilization near Vancouver Island’s northernmost tip.

We topped up our stores and fuel in Port Hardy, and set out toward Cape Scott and the wild west in a strong northwesterly wind that didn’t bode well for our chances of crossing the Nahwitti Bar, another well advertised obstacle in our path. The bar is long and shallow, and the current runs at 5 1/2 knots, creating great heaping crests and breakers when the wind opposes the current . . .

(Coming Wednesday: The Lure of Vancouver Island, Part 2)

Today's Thought

Adventure is the vitaminizing element in histories both individual and social.
William Bolitho, Twelve Against the Gods.

Tailpiece

I think, therefore I am. I am, therefore I sail. I sail, therefore I think I am crazy.

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)