“Time did not exist; or if it did it did not matter, and perhaps it was not always sunny.” M. Wylie Blanchet starts her iconic memoir of sailing the British Columbia inlets in the 1920’s and 30’s with her five children. “Standing in the Present, on the highest point of the curve, you can look back and see the Past, or forward and see the future, all in the same instant.”
As we start in on the final few days of our summer leg, now following the curve of Vancouver Island more east than south, we feel that curve. We rounded Cape Beale this morning, made our eastward turn past Pacheca Point an hour later, saw Cape Flattery appear off our starboard bow, and can now see the Olympic Peninsula fully stretched out to starboard across the 12-mile Strait of Juan de Fuca.
Following this curve, I see the summer memories pass behind us – watching whales breach and sea otters play, swimming in chilly waters, struggling to get our sea legs, planning and navigating, scrambling over rocky shores, running from biting flies, fishing and crabbing, dealing with whiny toddlers awake past their bedtimes, exploring the remains of cabins and middens, running from waves, competing to find the best shells, bushwacking through rooty trails. There is a special feeling – an almost palpable presence of that curve of time – when you realize that this is what Blanchet and her kids did a century ago and what Native American kids have done here on these shores for thousands of years.
Simultaneously, you can’t help but imagine what the early explorers must have gone through- Vancouver, Drake, DeFuca, Fidalgo, and others – coming into these waters without charts or GPS, thinking that down every deep inlet was a route to an inland sea, wondering all the time where dangerous rocks and reefs were lurking below the surface.
As we have followed the curve of land and time around the island, our perspective began changing. A few days ago, we found ourselves looking squarely toward the future, which looms large in the Unknown up ahead. There are voyages into less familar waters to prepare for – the western coast of the U.S., and then Mexico after that. And in a very short time, it will become our Present.
It feels odd to be finishing this leg of the adventure – a journey that has certainly been a shakedown cruise, but also a huge adventure and a massive accomplishment in its own right. I’ll reflect later on many of the specific and practical things we’ve learned along this trip, but for now, I just want to express appreciation for the ability to do it, to be able to see and explore a coast that so few people get to see, to live a little off the land with its rich resources of berries and fish, to get used to a new lifestyle, and for a moment to slow our lives down enough to feel – sometimes fleetingly and sometimes deeply – that curve of time upon which we all travel. I feel joy in becoming a small part of of this island’s story and the anonymity of all those who have gone before and will yet go.
As the parents of young children, we’ve spent much of the last six years in search of beaches. At the start of the 4:00 crazy hour(s), we sought out beaches. On what-should-we do-today weekend days, we sought out beaches. On short boat trips, we anchored and immediately went ashore to explore the beaches. When we traveled to the UK and Iceland two years ago, we wisely booked our rooms on beaches. And when we started on this new boat adventure, we expected to be going from beach to beach with our sand-crazy kids. But expectations are meant to be dashed, I suppose, and we have found it difficult to find that elusive sand.
After heading north from our San Juan Islands backyard, we found no end to oyster strewn beaches, kelp-covered rocks, and expansive low tide mud flats covered in bivalves. We would see a light strip of land from afar, point Tinker in its direction, and then feel our faces drop as the light color was yet more oyster and barnacle shells, crammed in so tightly together that they looked like white sand from a distance.
The kids, to their credit, learned to walk carefully on those rocky oyster beaches, and they are becoming more adept at at navigating slippery kelp covered rocks (not without some falls along the way). But mud flats are now avoided, as we have had to retrieve one too many shoes from the mud and had to carry overwhelmed kids one too many sticky steps back to real land. And so we are willing to drive our little Tinker around every inch of an anchorage to find any hidden strip of sand.
One of the great joys of the west coast of Vancouver Island – other than its stunning desolate beauty – has been the reappearance of sand. Real sand. Sand castle sand. Sink-your-toes-into-the-softness sand. I never realized sand could be stunning. The joy on Dylan’s face as doffed his shoes and ran around on a strip of silk in the Bunsby Islands was priceless. “Mommy, this is the best sand in the whole world!” he joyfully declared. Absence makes the heart grow fonder – and more appreciative.
Rugged Point Marine Provincial Park at the entrance to Kyuquot Sound was a child’s heaven. A long, powdery gray beach stretched for a mile in front of our wavy-but-worth-it anchorage. Dylan happily rolled in the powder and ran down the beach in utter amazement. A short half mile hike to the ocean side of the park opened up a wild playground for the boys. Beach after beach of “rainbow sand” (Dylan’s term) extended for miles upon this shore, separated only by small volcanic peninsulas covered by low-tide abundance.
The kids aren’t yet wondering about the geologic reasons why a watery terrain so dotted with rocky reefs and pillars can also be home to the softest, sandiest beaches. They aren’t yet wondering why some beaches are white, some are gray, and some are mottled rainbow. They might later. For now, they are simply experiencing the pure joy of a resource whose value we used to take for granted.
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.
Demon the Cat. Far and away, Demon has been the quickest to adapt to boat life. She’s happy in her cat-bed, has found joy in exploring all nooks and crannies, is enjoying the view and the night-time catting on deck, growling at passing boats and seals, and settling in quite nicely. Granted, she has spent more than half her life aboard boats, but after so many years away from the water, she found her groove awfully quickly. Which is much more than I can say for the rest of us.
Most Challenging Thing: A three year old with poor listening skills, no sense of self preservation, a class clown personality, and a tendency to push everyone’s buttons. Maybe I should rephrase that: A three year old. Period. Andy has been hard. And spending so much time disciplining, teaching, reprimanding, reminding, scolding, reminding again, disciplining again WEARS ON THE SOUL. But this is not unique to a boat; this is parenting a three year old. One big difference now is that we’re doing it 24-7, whereas before we only had morning/night/weekend duty. The other difference is that on a boat it might be a matter of life and death. When he stands on his tiptoes and leans over the side of the boat because he wants to see the bow wave more closely or grabs the pilot house steering wheel while you’re undocking, not listening to calls to STOP is not an option. So, we’re doing a lot of teaching. That word seems too gentle to convey the tone of our voices and the exasperation we feel. And yet, when I asked Andy what was his favorite thing so far about living on a boat, he said “all the love.” And so I melted. And so I will do my best to be strict and unswaying, but make sure that “all the love” is still there. Because sometimes it has felt like it isn’t.
Most Rewarding Thing: Seeing Dylan come into his own on the boat has been incredibly rewarding. Despite a few difficulties, he seems to be at home here and is absorbing everything, including nautical terminology, sea animal behavior, and even moving around on deck. And seeing the kids’ imaginative play is wonderful; they pretend that lines have been cut to the radar, they rig up nets to catch bad guys in, they practice tying knots and building boats boats with wings. It’s also rewarding to seeing them exploring ashore. No beach goes left unexplored, and every beach-fort is supplemented with the kids’ drift-wood tillers and solar panels. For my own part, I am enjoying reading. I haven’t done as much as I wanted, but I am rediscovering print books and enjoying the relationship with the printed page again.
And: ORCAS! We got to see a pod of orcas, which, yes, even if you are from the Pacific Northwest, is still a very special treat. This is the first time that we have been out on Korvessa and seen them, and we couldn’t have been more happy to catch a glimpse of the beautiful creatures. And, in truth, I also got a lot of joy out of seeing a flock of little goslings and a family of huge river otters, so the reward and joy is not reserved solely for the large animals.
Most Surprising Thing: Despite all the frustrations, I feel good being back on a boat. I like the warm, cozy spaces. I don’t mind the limited space in the galley. I like having varied views and new neighbors with every move. On the negative side of surprising, I simply thought I would have more time. I thought I would have more time to write. I thought I would have more time to read. I thought I would have more time to study Spanish or organize the boat or make lee-cloths or study cook books or exercise. None of that has happened. I seem to spend all my time cooking, cleaning, and disciplining in between shore trips. Yes, that has to change, and that will take my own self-discipline.
And then there’s the regular everyday parts of cruising: We’ve enjoyed some beautiful anchorages (Cypress Head, James Island, Deer Harbor, Echo Bay on Sucia Island, Patos Island, Friday Harbor, and on to Reid Harbor on Stuart Island tonight. We’ve met so many people along the way and love talking with them about their own passions and plans. We’ve started a little boat school (officially just an hour a day at this point for the sake of having a little structure), but of course the kids are soaking up much more than that. We’re still trying to figure out our timing with how often we’ll need to dump trash and recycling or head into a marina. It’s a little more often at this point because we have not caught our stride yet. We’ve had otters play on board at night (not welcome), crows get into our trash on deck (also not welcome), and seals poke their curious eyes up to follow us (very welcome).
