Barkley Sound is about 300 square miles of water filled with rocks and islands located on the Pacific side of Vancouver Island. We've tried to get out here before on a few occasions but been knocked back by the prevailing westerly winds in the wicked Straits of Juan de Fuca. Having done it...it's sometimes just easier to go 'the long way'... six hundred miles up the 'inside passage', over the top of the island and then slide downwind on the northwesterly winds that blow most of the summer.
Once we arrived to the safety of "Joes Bay" in the Broken Group, we parked and slept. We did a little bit of kayaking each day exploring the nearby islands. I am admittedly more 'adventurous' of our boats traveling in company and like to poke into little nooks and indents in the rugged islands. Tori and Dixie aboard Sea Fever are quick to follow into new and interesting albeit tight anchorages. We often drop the hook and then tie the sterns of our boats to trees surrounding little lagoons. The third boat in our triage this year was Nancy Early aboard Tethys, a veteran of not one but two complete circumnavigations and the first to do so with an all women's crew. Nancy is careful in her travels and I think we may have stretched her a bit on this trip but she and Lynn were good sports and enjoyed some amazing little spots as a result.
We ventured into some amazing little spots such as Nettle Island, Cataract Bay and Franks Bay for a few days each. We dinghied over to Lucky Creek and hiked up the waterfalls and kayaked up Pipestem inlet for miles in company with a golden eagle. Useless Bay had a treacherous entrance (warning...do not enter when seas are breaking over the rocky entrance...) and it was not at all useless once we go in there...it was crab country.
Nancy is this year's designated 'crab killing machine'. Barkley is home to a tremendous number of Dungeness Crabs and Nancy was first in for the 'kill'. "First you grab them from the backside, then you flip them over while holding their legs and claws apart...then you "relax them' against some sharp object and literally tear them in half...ALIVE. Their shells will pop right off after that!" She swears this is much preferred to 'boiling them alive'... It was amazing eating...despite the process!
This is also 'bear country'...with bears often on the beaches foraging for food. There are lots of bears and this year we got very close to two of them in our big boats and our kayaks...fortunately not while ashore this year.
The Pacific Rim National Park includes a 30 mile hike along the rugged west coast from Port Renfrew out to Bamfield, a little town filled with boardwalks where one's transportation around 'town' is entirely by boat. It's a great little town where we ended this years cruise at the "Bamfield Music Festival. This is the fourth year of the festival and the evening we attended featured UBC's resident string quartet and a pianist from Boston. Classical music (and a bit of Gershwin) in the middle of nowhere. Spoiled Rotten. It was our first port in two weeks and quite a treat!
The best part of most trips 'up the outside' of the island is coming home. We go back out into the Pacific and then south into the Straits on a summer westerly wind which usually makes for a great sail and this year was no exception. We left Bamfield at first light with full visibility....and then slipped into the cover of dense fog. We had almost zero visibility for 30 miles and later in the day we were sailing downwind at full speed (8-10 knots) with about one boat length's visibility (only 50 feet!). We hoped there were no sleeping whales or other boats without radar! When we popped out into the clear and breezy afternoon we could see both sides of the straits (Canada to the left and the USA to the right) and played tag with "Sea Fever" for a few hours up to Race Rocks.
One more day from Canada into Port Angeles and we were home free...like kids playing on the freeway we crossed some of the busiest shipping lanes in the world once again in ....dense fog but the day lightened up, the predicted gales fortunately came late and we were safely on the hook in Port Ludlow having a bbq by sunset. It was another amazing trip with memories galore...and we learned a few things along the way...but don't forget..."We Were Working!"
Hope you're having a great summer!
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