Even on a calm day with only three to six knots of wind, Cape Scott gave us a learning experience we will not soon forgot. This video shows some reflections on the day of our rounding, but such a powerful experience warrants some deeper reflection and sharing. I find I can’t paint a picture of the day the way I would like – the way the fog enveloped everything, the way the anxiety of what lay ahead wrenched our stomachs, the way the waves built and built, then became swells, then became confused from all directions, then became soft swell from behind us, the way unsecured things came crashing off of shelves and cabinets and doors banged open. But instead of painting a full picture, I can reflect a little on what we learned.
I learned that I am not immune to the inevitable mal de mer. I also learned – as Tom put my queasy head and hands on the helm – that steering, dodging logs, and focusing on the rise and fall of the bow is my cure for seasickness. I learned how to steer in bigger seas than I’ve ever experienced, both with the swell in front and from the stern. I learned what ocean swell feels like. I learned what no sight of land feels like. I learned what stepping foot onto solid land feels like after a hard day.
Together we all learned that the kids can handle more than we thought. We learned that even the cat had trouble regaining her balance after a rough day. We learned where every piece of unsecured gear was. We learned that huge logs can appear over a swell in a millisecond, threatening the integrity of your precious propeller. We learned that the ocean here is littered with sea otters! We laughed at our naivete on our first sea otter sighting the day before, turning the boat around to get pictures, not realizing that we would see them every four or five minutes throughout the whole Cape Scott trip. We learned that sea otters can look a lot like logs, that waves can look like boats, and that tired eyes can play horrible tricks on a brain in the fog. We learned that our boat is strong and can handle the ocean.
Above all, we learned that we can work as a team. That we can and need to communicate with each other about how we feel and what we need at any given moment. It will not be the last time we will need to draw on that lesson. Cape Scott gave us much to learn, much to reflect on, and the confidence to recognize what we still have yet to learn and plan how to do it.
We wandered aimlessly through the web of trails on Cormorant Island above the sleepy town of Alert Bay. Mushrooms grew voraciously out of decaying logs. Giant ferns spread their arms out to us. Only small speckles of sunlight made it through the thick cedar boughs. The kids made up a game. There was a different monster down each path; you had to decide which path to take, walk on the boardwalks, run on the parts with extra traction, and cross over magic roots and magic bridges. There were some mean monsters, and there were some nice monsters, including – to my shock – the nice mommy monster. The goal of the game was to hide from the monsters.
There’s any number of reasons that all our monsters were out in full force that day. Tom was shoulder deep in the bilge attempting to replace an impeller, which was going badly as water poured into the boat. I hadn’t had a moment to myself in days and was struggling to get chores done with kids in tow while the boat was torn apart. We had had a long day of local tourism the previous day, not getting the kids into bed until well after 9:00 that night. And that doesn’t even include the whole reason we had stopped for a “rest” in Alert Bay: we had had a few very rough days transiting some difficult waters.
To hit slack tide at Seymour Narrows and a good tide in the Johnstone Strait, we were up at 5:00 and 6:00 am a few days in a row. Nobody was sleeping enough. The kids had been mildly sea sick. The boat was a mess. Wind was on our nose at 15 to 20 knots true, which means our apparent wind (what we felt) was 22 to 27. We pounded into wave after wave. There’s rarely a good time to go through the Johnstone strait, as the wind is almost always a strong northwesterly, which opposes the ebb current that you want to take you northwest. And when that wind opposes that current, the sea state becomes very uncomfortable. We braved the waves and appreciated the news from a boat further up letting us know that it would let up.
What a joy it was to finally be able to tuck into a passage behind West Cracroft Island and know that we wouldn’t have to reenter Johnstone. But the next day Blackfish Sound proved just as windy and uncomfortable. There was a saving grace to distract us: a humpback whale emerged not 100 meters from our boat and proceeded to dive and resurface around us for the next three or four minutes. A night in a beautiful but rolly bay on Hanson Island gave us little rest, even with our bellies full of freshly caught rockfish and fresh-out-of-the-oven bread. The short but windy and choppy drive up to Alert Bay was exhausting, and even the boys didn’t give much heed to the Dall’s porpoises playing briefly in our bow wave.
After that, instead of hiding from the monsters, the kids immediately went looking for the monsters. They peered under bridges. They talked about how big the monsters’ eyes were and how long their arms were. And it hit me that perhaps I need to confront mommy monster and learn to recognize her and when she’s coming. To know what brings her out from under her bridge, what the color of her eyes are, and – most importantly – to learn how to ask her politely to return down her forested path. We can’t have a world without monsters, but if we can acknowledge their existence and breathe and laugh to quell their fire, then perhaps we can devise a peaceful coexistence.
Looking for an anchorage off the beaten path in Desolation Sound, we found an anchorable nook behind little Elworthy Island – a nook we would never have seen had we not been looking for it. Our chart plotter gave us no depth readings after a certain point, but we proceeded ever so slowly, having confidence in the advice that this place would make a good anchorage. Indeed it did, and other than the rave of mosquitoes, we only shared our anchorage with one other boat – a 26-foot Bristol Channel Cutter, whose owners had sailed her to and around the South Pacific and Australia for 15 years. We swapped sea stories, and they humored our kids, gave us their book, and offered us some yummy self-caught shrimp for lunch. Thank you, Dan and Alice!
Our drive the next day up the desolate Toba Inlet lived up to its reputation. Waterfalls cascaded down sheer cliffs, peaks kissed with snow greeted us around each small bend. It is sheer and wild. There are no emergency anchorages, no places to duck in to avoid weather or wind. We saw only one other boat – going in the opposite direction.
What was also stunning was how difficult it was to anchor. We drove slowly along the cliff edge to try to find the spots that a guide book said we could anchor and shore tie our stern to prevent from swinging or dragging. Our depth sounder gave us no readings that would give us shallow enough anchoring depth, and we could already practically reach out and touch the scraggly trees ashore. As we edged closer and closer to find out where the anchorable water would be, the chart plotter showed us squarely driving upon land. So much for accuracy.
We motored past the logging camp, and despite assurances that it’s okay to tie up to log booms (as long as you’re prepared to leave at 4:00 in the morning when they want to hook up to a tug and depart), we chose not to take that course of action. We maneuvered slowly to the head of the bay, eyes glued to the depth sounder. This inlet, which at its center is 1600 feet deep, took its good time getting up to even a depth that we could read. We moved slowly across the contour lines: 300, 250, 200, 150, 70, 40, 19.5, 18, 17.5 (!), and into reverse we went. With a bottom contour like that and tidal changes of 16 feet, that is an impossible anchorage.
We drove carefully and sounded the bottom. The space between 30 and 60 feet of depth gave us enough room to feel confident that we could anchor, but it was tight, and we would not have room enough to swing. We could not shore tie because we wouldn’t be able to have enough anchor scope out to keep us secure. We decided to set a stern anchor in order to keep us parallel to land. We made ourselves secure and headed out to explore the bay by dinghy before dinner. The kids were delighted with the bay as we traversed the shallow bank looking for bears and noticing the different flora, fauna, and terrain than we see in most anchorages. The glacial and fast-moving fresh-water river made the landscape of this bay a new one to our eyes. We pushed our little dinghy as far as we could up the river, tasted the fresh cold water, and then let the river’s current push us quickly back out into the bay, resulting in delighted squeals from both children.
The kids finally tucked in to bed after a long and tiring day, Tom and I went back up top for a glass of wine. As we sat on the cabin top, there she was 55 yards away, standing on the exact spot that we had gone ashore briefly a few hours earlier: a beautiful brown grizzly bear. She stayed mere seconds, perusing the berry bush, sniffing the ground, looking up at us, and then slowly ambling away. We were glad of the pool-length of water that separated us, but we were awed to be able to be so close to such a large and extraordinary animal.
In the morning, the terrain around us showed a different world than we had entered the day before. Expansive sand flats extended out from the river’s mouth, our stern anchor was clearly visible above water sunk deeply into the mud, and more and more land emerged behind Korvessa as the tide kept dropping. But our depth sounder never showed less than 28 feet of water below our keel, and our eyes could see the deepening contour of the bottom, even as dry land seemed to creep closer and closer. The chart plotter showed us on dry land. But we smiled with the knowledge of our new secret.
A morning low-tide dinghy ride and short beach excursion ashore was a good way to end our visit at this wild, difficult, and stunning bay. As we motored back down the inlet, fishing lines trolling behind us, it felt like we were headed back into the relative security of “civilization.” But after anchoring in Von Donop Inlet (and using our lead line to confirm depth after our depth sounder began acting squirrly) and seeking out one of the trailheads, we saw the sign posted clearly at the water’s edge: “This is Wolf Country.” Sigh. We are certainly still squarely in the wilderness. Just not as deep.
We chose to emerge from the wilderness with a stop at Gorge Harbor, where the kids played in the pool for 2.5 hours, and in Campbell River for three days of purging, cleaning, provisioning, and visiting with Tom’s parents. We are on the cusp of heading further into the wilderness as we round Cape Scott and head out to the west coast of Vancouver Island. And though we are loaded down with paper charts, a chart plotter, and three guide books, we know that the most important thing we can do is to use our eyes, our heads, our logic, and our hightened awareness.
We’re a month and a day into our voyage – a month and a day full of both the longest and slowest moments. After a rough first two weeks in the San Juan Islands, we crossed the Canadian border and settled ourselves into Port Sidney Marina so Tom could head back to Anacortes to work for a week. The rest did us all some good. Tom helped fill the cruising kitty, and the boys and I explored Sidney, visiting every museum, playground, pool, and store we could by foot or by bus. By the time we untied the docklines in Sidney, we were refreshed, ready to re-engage, and looking forward to heading “into the wilderness” so we could live up to our name. This 
Trawling our first fishing lines under low, gray, Pacific Northwest clouds, we joyfully tilted our faces toward the cooling drizzle and the next – more hopeful – phase of our voyage. It didn’t matter that nothing caught the ends of our hooks. The boys loved the new activity, and it ensured that we slowed down to less than 4 knots and simply enjoy the short passage between the towering hills on either side. We headed up to Saltspring Island and stayed for a night at a friend’s mooring buoy. Casting our eyes out over the channel and watching the tugboats and fishing boats traverse the gray water, we enjoyed good company, pool time, and cooler weather.
After a stroll in the Ganges Saturday market for me and a dinghy ride for the boys to see seals and totem poles, we took the good fortune of a simultaneous southeast breeze and flood tide to sail up the Strait of Georgia to Lasqueti Island. There in Boho Bay we sat out a rough, windy few days by catching crab, baking, peering over the edge of Tinker, exploring oyster beaches, catching dead jellyfish in shovels, and playing in Jedadiah Island provincial park. We were cut off from all communication, and welcomed the slow down that the weather and remoteness dictated.
We’re now in Pender Harbour, BC for a somewhat unscheduled stop to repair a fairly spectacular alternator failure. But after a few drives to the hardware store – offered up by the kindness of strangers (thank you Ron from Farrington Cove and Robin from Duncan Cove!) – and a long morning and afternoon in the bilge for Tom replacing the alternator, its bolt, and its belt, we are back up and running. I have done two loads of laundry, taken the kids swimming twice, and taken advantage of the wifi and cell phone signal to make some calls and upload our video, while the kids busied themselves with swimming, playing, spotting snakes in the rocks, and probably loudly disturbing everyone in (the absolutely wonderful) Pender Harbour Resort in Duncan Cove.
