Returning from Barkley Sound July 2009

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!

Barkley Sound July 2009

I told Rumor to watch out for birds!

I was talking about watching out for Eagles though!  Out here on the 'Wild Coast' there are eagles everywhere you turn.  They have the funniest bird call that is high pitched and very un-eagle-like if you ask me...but they're all over the place.  The eagles are also notorious for swooping down on fisherman to snatch away their fresh caught salmon.  We have even had customers who lost their little 'toto-like' dog to an eagle who swooped down

and took him right off of the foredeck and flew away for a nice lunch.

When I told Rumor to watch out for birds she took note and as soon as we anchored in Joe's Bay...in the middle of the Broken Islands Group in Barkley Sound, we were surrounded by hummingbirds.  They are all around us.  

It didn't take long before one flew into 'Sea Fever' and was flying into the glass trying frantically to get out.  Just a few minutes later one flew into Insignia's bright pilothouse causing Rumor to jump for joy!  She was

bouncing off of the settee with fresh hummingbird flying just out of reach. It was all I could do to catch the hummingbird with one hand and the cat with the other in hopes of saving a bloody memory of Joe's Bay.   If Rumor

ever got the taste of fresh bird...her canned duck pate cat food would never again suffice!  

Thankfully Tori and Dixie returned to help free the poor hummingbird who had no idea he'd flown into the wrong boat this afternoon!   "That boat has a cat in it!!"   ...and I told her to watch out for the birds!  (I didn't want

Rumor to be an Eagle's snack!!)  little did I know Rumor would have fresh bird right over where she nestles in the pilothouse!

We had a fun July fourth weekend coming up from Seattle to Victoria.  Mike Buckley and Anne Cipolla joined us for the trip across the straits which were uneventful save for the wild gyrations of Insignia under the control of her

disoriented autopilot.  Turns out our big 'pots and pans' locker is adjacent to the fluxgate compass that the autopilot uses to know where to go.  Once we removed the pots and pans to a new location and recalibrated the magnetic compass our autopilot began to behave normally again once again.

Vicoria was fun!   Jim & Gail Innes, customers and friends from White Rock joined us in their beautiful new Beneteau 49 'Red Sheila'  (with her Tuscan 'Safety' Orange canvas she's quite a sight!)    We had a party  of 12 for a great birth-month celebration dinner at Il Terrazzo!

The weather forecast pinned us in Victoria for an extra night as we waited for the outer coast weather to settle down a bit but we survived!   We were surrounded by a large Orca Whale pod as we punched through 35 knots of

breeze while clearing Race Rocks just west of Victoria.  We took shelter in Becher Bay for our brief night before our 5am departure to head out the Straits of Juan de Fuca towards Barkley.  This is the part of the trip that

is the toughest.   It's one very long day up the long line of shipwrecks that parallel the Pacific Coast hiking trail that runs from Port Renfrew out to Barkley Sound.  We had light winds, a little sloppy wave action and some

nice sailing at the end of the trip past Bamfield and into Robbers Passage.

Our crab trap came up empty this morning so we headed across the sound into the Pacific Rim National Park and the Broken Islands.  This is literally a 'Sea of Rocks' and it's our first time with the aid of electronic

navigation.  I'm not sure if it's helping lower the stress level...or increasing it!  Too much information!   We've been here several times before but this trip we have a deeper draft (keel depth of 7 feet this trip) so we

have less clearance and no room for error.  The girls on Sea Fever draw 8.5' with their boat...even more!

We've seen one other sailboat and one powerboat all day as we slowly cruised through the archipelago...there are very few pleasure boats, so far more fishing boats and way, way more kayaks.   We're each carrying two kayaks and

we're hoping to spend this coming week working on our upper arm strength as we paddle around the islands.   The mist and clouds hover right over the tree tops and it makes for a mystical experience.  One tends to be quiet in

the stillness...until the hummingbirds arrive!

From Joe's Bay....Barkley Sound, BC

-Robbie