Sailing!

So much for plans.  There is a Canadian Military testing area called WG, or Whiskey-Golf, just north of Nanaimo, that is a no-go for recreational vessels when they are doing their tests (not sure exactly what is being tested).  No sooner than I had written to the blog our plan for Lasqueti Island, the announcement came over the VHF radio that today they were closing the area, which basically closed the route to Lasqueti.  Our backup plan was to head across the Straight of Georgia to the Sunshine Coast, so that became the day’s objective.

There was a very nice 15 – 18 knot breeze blowing from the NW.  One we were clear of the Departure Bay ferry traffic we hoisted the sails and turned off the diesel.  We started out sailing further south than a straight line course to our destination, in order to clear the bottom corner of Whiskey Golf, but we were scooting along at 8 or 9 knots much of the time.   (compared to the 6 knots or so we do when motoring along).  ( a knot is a nautical mile/hour and a nautical mile is maybe 20% longer than a regular mile).

Once we made the corner, we turned upwind as far as we could, and basically followed the eastern boundary of the test range north.   We got close to land just north of Sechelt, and turned the diesel back on for the final hour or so to our destination, Secret Cove.  We had the anchor down by 5:30.

The trip across was a very nice sail.  No one got seasick, and Emily spent the trip below decks, amusing herself in a variety of ways, including using the inclined floor of the boat as a slide.

It is common in this area to run a rope to shore in conjunction with the bow anchor, to keep the boat from spinning if the wind changes.  My trip to run the line in tonight resulted in the first bounty from the sea. 

I have eaten a lot of oysters over the years, but this was by far the biggest. Four swallows, I think!

Nanaimo

Old man and the sea, Nanaimo Harbour 

We tied up in the Nanaimo inner harbour early afternoon, which gave us lots of time for Emily to go for a bike ride, and to do laundry and a few other chores.  I had great hopes of getting caught up on this blog, but had some computer problems, that took a day to resolve.  We have also been struggling with the batteries on the boat, and I finally convinced the charter company that the problems were real, and the owner planned on coming up early Tuesday morning to investigate.

We decided that we would spend a full day here, so once the service call was completed, Sara, Emily and I headed off for the aquatic centre.  We had a good swim, and then headed to the Vault, a restaurant/ coffee shop we discovered the last time we were in town.

After lunch, I headed to the boat to finish my computer cleanup, and write a few emails related to Arctic Tern (orange boat).  When Sara and Emily got back, Sara helped me lay out the anchor chain on the dock, so I could properly mark its length in various places.  Knowing how much anchor chain is out is important for safe anchoring, and this boat, like many other charter boats, does not have it marked well.

As we were finishing up that chore, our neighbours on sailboat Nayeli invited us over fro a glass of wine.  Bill and Janet are one week into an all summer cruise up to Alaska from their port of Anacortes, and they shared locations of some of their "secret" anchorages with us.  I hope will have a chance to visit some of them later this trip.

I awoke to more mis-behaving batteries.  After a few more tests, and more communication with the owner, we decided to take the larger of the 2 battery charger out of service. We won't have great performance, but hopefully this will improve the pretty weak electrical performance we have had to date.

As I write this, Emily and Sara are off running a couple of last errands.  We are hoping to set off in the next hour or 2, bound (I think) for Lasqueti Island for tonight, and start working further north after that.

Pirates Cove

We left Galiano around 4:00 pm on Sunday, motored up to to De Courcy island, and anchored in a pretty little cove called Pirates Cove.  Although it has a reputation for being crowded in the summer, there was only 1 other boat anchored there.  We had the anchor down in time for a lovely dinner of curry chicken sausage and rice.

A couple of days earlier I was explaining to Emily about the water wearing strange shapes into the rocks.  Her response:  "I know that dad, it's how sea caves are made".  Hmmm.  There were some small sea caves near our boat, so we headed over in the dinghy first thing in the morning to explore these, and look for pirates in the forest.

We went back to Rio Dorado, and Sara, Camille and Emily went ashore to explore, while I sorted out our route to Nanaimo, and readied the boat for departure.  The route to Nanaimo goes through Dodd Narrows, which runs like a river during peak tidal flood and ebb.  We departed as soon as the girls got back in the dinghy, and hit Dodd Narrows nicely at slack tide, for a calm trip through.

Galiano Island

We had wanted to get to Galiano this weekend because they were holding their annual Active Pass festival.  Montague Harbour is several km from the various festival venues, so first thing in the morning Emily and I took the dinghy into the marina, to see about getting into town.  I met one of the brothers who owns the marina, who informed me that there are no busses or cabs, but hitchhiking is common and easy.  He mentioned something about maybe lending me his truck, (we're not on the mainland anymore!), but I declined his generous offer.  Meanwhile, Emily had made a new best friend, Archer.

It took some convincing to get Emily to suspend the game of fetch, so we could go back to the sailboat to collect Sara and Camille.

The hitch hike to the festival was pretty straightforward.  We split up, with Emily and I catching a sweet ride in a convertible (although they dropped us about a 20 minute walk from where we wanted to be).

The main festival grounds was pretty quiet, with most of the action taking place on a number of tours, which we had missed.  We started walking back to an area we know had restaurants, when we were picked up by a festival shuttle.  The driver convinced us to let him take us to the "locivore lunch", one of the festival events.  Seemed like a good way to experience local culture, so we agreed.  Definitely an interesting menu, with the star ingredient being nettles (yes, the stinging kind!).  Nettle soup, nettle orzo, nettle strata, nettle crostini, even nettle and mint ice cream!  All for $5.00.  Quite good, actually,  and very nutritious, we're told.  Somehow, though, we didn't find the motivation to head into the forest in our protective gear to harvest a bunch for ourselves

After a quick stop at a nearby market, it was time to hitch back to the boat.  Sara and Camille were interested in checking out a store across the street, so Emily and I went on ahead.  The guy that picked us up  said he couldn't resist the charms of a pretty young girl, and took us well past his own stop right to the marina.

By the time we got to the marina, it was raining pretty hard, so we went into the little shop there to get out of the rain.  As I was pulling Emily's rain jacket out of my pack (so she could play more fetch with Archer), I commented to the lady minding the store that my wife probably wasn't too happy that I had all her rain gear in my pack.  Once again the small town/island hospitality showed itself, and she quickly produced her car keys.  Emily and I were soon off in search of Sara and Camille, who we found about 5km away.  I normally would not pick up such wet hitch hikers, but, it not being my own car and all, we made an exception.

Saltspring Island

Friday, with Camille on board, we departed Ladysmith and headed south.  Once again not much wind for sailing, and with a fair distance to cover we motored the whole way into Ganges Harbour on Saltspring Island.  We decided to stay in the main town marina, and were tied up around 4:00.  We quickly headed out for a quick walk,before the stores closed.  Sara and Camille went grocery shopping, while Emily and I played hide and seek with her stuffed animals in a nearby park.  Dinner on the boat, and an early bedtime for all.

The next morning I took Emily out for an early bike ride  and more hide & seek in the park, and then we met Sara and Camille at the Saltspring Saturday market.  We managed to find some great food and assorted trinkets to buy, and then I headed back to the boat, where I got the blog operational and wrote all the previous posts.  The girls did a bit more shopping, and we finally were ready to depart mid afternoon.

We finally had some wind, and got to put the sails up finally, for our trip over to Montague Harbour on Galiano Island.  We had hoped to find a public mooring ball to tie up to, but it seemed like they were all privately owned, so we dropped our anchor instead.  Emily and I tried jigging for a bit before dinner,  and later we went out for a quick dinghy ride in the rain, before bed time.

Leaving Sidney, at last

Rio Dorado, with First Mate Emily at the helm

With Arctic Tern gone, we could finally get our real vacation started.  We had invited Sara's friend Camille to join us for a few days, and decided to meet up with here in Ladysmith Wednesday evening.  After a bit of last minute shopping, we left Sidney harbour at around 10:30, which would give us favourable current for most of the 36 nautical mile (nm) trip.  There was not a lot of wind as we motored up and around Shwartz bay.  The wind picked up enough once we were northbound to the west of Saltspring to raise the mainsail, but we kept the engine running since we had a long way to go.

Emily has been excited to go fishing, so once we were well underway, I set about organizing our fishing gear.  My tenant Gerry from Cranbrook is a commercial fisherman, and gave me a selection of lures and lots of advice on how to use them.  I had an old trolling reel I got from my dad, and a new rod just purchased in Vancouver.  I tied on a combination of lure, flasher, and line-sinking device I got from Gerry, and lowered it into the water.  After letting out what seemed to be sufficient line, I went back to navigation and driving.  After a couple of minutes, I checked the rod, to see that line was continuing to spool off behind the boat, and the reel was rapidly emptying.  Oops!

I quickly stopped the line with my hands, and looped it around the reel while I figured out how to increase the drag tension.  Once I had this properly set, I started the surprisingly arduous chore of reeling in what must have been a hundreds of feet of line, with a pretty heavy load of tackle on the end.  There was no rush, so I did a number of sessions of 60 to 80 cranks, separated by rest breaks.

In retrospect, I should have paid attention to the tackle salesman in Vancouver, who, when looking over the reel, pointed out where one should put in oil.

Alas, I did not.  And so... The tackle was within 30 meters of the boat when the reel shattered, and literally came to a grinding halt.  Not good, as Emily is fond of saying in such situations. So, on with the sailing gloves, to finish retrieving the lure setup by hand.

We pulled into the Ladysmith marina at around 4:00, with no fresh salmon to show for our efforts. A very nice place, and we had lots of time to let Emily ride her bike around, and over to a playground before dinner.

April 17 - 20 - The big orange distraction

I had pretty much stopped shopping for a boat of our own, planning on resuming the search  next spring (2017), but I was intrigued enough by a listing I came across to correspond a bit with the owners.  It turns out that the UK-based boat was in BC waters, and would still be here at the start of our vacation.  They were eager to leave though, so we went to see the boat as soon as we arrived in Sidney.

The boat, "Arctic Tern", immediately felt right.  She is a real ship, with the accomplishments to prove it, including a transit of the Northwest Passage in 2014.  The owners were very accommodating and lovely to spend time with.  To keep this post brief, we decided that we want to make her ours, and spent the next 2 days trying to make that happen.  For many reasons, we arrived at a plan that has the following steps:

• Arctic Tern leaves immediately for Panama, via Mexico (to get through the hurricane belt before hurricane season starts - end of June)
• Put a formal contract in place over the next 2 weeks
• Assuming we have a signed deal (subject to inspection in the UK) I join boat in Panama early June
• I sail with Ali and Les from Panama to North Wales, with possible stop in Bermuda (5 weeks approx).  This is a tremendous opportunity both to learn the boat really well, but to build my experience as a sailor as well.
• We conduct full boat inspection in N Wales
• Barring any major technical issues with the boat, we finalize the purchase
• Emily and Sara come over mid-July through late August for some cruising around the UK and Ireland
• We put the boat into storage for the winter somewhere over there
• Full summer season in Norther Europe in 2017

This might seem a bit bold and crazy, particularly to materialize in just a few days, but I feel like we have been preparing for something like this for a few years now, and finally the right opportunity has come along.   

The whole family sailed (well, motored actually) from Sidney down to Victoria with Ali and Les on Wednesday morning, and said our good byes until (hopefully) Panama for me, and Wales for the girls.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled vacation...  I need it.

If anyone want more detail, the boat's web site may be reached by clicking here, and the sale brochure may be read by clicking here. (no need to sign up, just select "continue to view" at the bottom of the first page you see).

April 15 - 17 from Fernie to Sidney

We got a rather late start from Fernie Friday night (8:00 PM)  but made it to Revelstoke nevertheless, with Emily sleeping much of the way. Woke the hotel manager up at 12;30, only to have him show me our room key under the front mat.   I felt bad for the guy, particularly when I noticed the email instructing me to look there.  Oops.

It was a bit of a slog to Vancouver from there, with a few stops to keep everyone happy, but made it in time to do some shopping errands we planned.  Stayed in Richmond Sat night, and reserved a passage on the 9:00 Ferry Sunday morning.  A decent night's sleep, although Sara had to ask some young guys to keep it down in the hallway outside our door around midnight.

Once we were on board the ferry, I called my nephew Chris.  It turned out that he and his girlfriend were on the same Ferry.  We had a good visit with them, and while we were talking the group that Sara quieted down the night before walked up.  It turned out they were the volleyball team Chris coaches, and they were all in the same hotel as us.  Small world.

Welcome

Hi Everyone:

Our plan is to use this blog to document our travels and post pictures from our sailing adventures.  Your comments and feedback are welcome.