SV Gallant Fox

They Call the 8th Month Foggust

Along the West Coast of the US, warm summer air moving over cooler ocean water produces fog. In the usual summertime pattern, fog develops offshore, moves inland overnight, and lifts or dissipates the next morning. The fog can be light or heavy, localized or widespread, short-lived or lingering. Whether it’s characterized as marine fog, radiation fog, or plain old overcast, reduced visibility is so common during August on the West Coast a boater can expect it about 15 days during the month. Yep - half of the time.

Each boat has its own strategy for dealing with fog. Some boats - usually the commercial and sport fishers - get underway when visibility is near zero. Others - especially recreational sailors like us - prefer to delay our departures until there is at least SOME visibility - say, more than ¼ mile - the better to spot things like buoys, crab pot floats, and other boats. However, that can be a complicated choice because a few hours’ wait for the fog to lighten up, combined with a long distance to travel, risks a boat not arriving at the next destination before the fog returns and/or darkness falls. A basic rule of boating is to avoid entering an unfamiliar anchorage or port at night or in dense fog, when it is more difficult to spot hazards. We follow this rule and so far have had no problems, although we have sometimes spent the whole day (or even day and night) underway with such limited visibility we have had to rely only on our instruments (radar, GPS, depth sounder and chart plotter) compared to the dead reckoning and positions we plot on paper charts. It’s a lot like flying a small airplane in a cloud bank. Do Not Like. Do Not Want.

Visibility issues aside, there are many ways to travel southward by boat along the West Coast. Some boaters make a long ocean passage from Canada to Southern California with only one or two stops along the way; they tend to sail about 30-60 miles offshore. Others prefer to stay close to shore (within 3 to 10 miles) and take short day trips hoping from harbor to harbor. Other boaters choose a middle distance of about 10 to 20 miles offshore, making a few overnight passages but putting in to places of interest, while avoiding most of the inshore vessel traffic, the ubiquitous crab pots, and the large offshore commercial freighter traffic. Still other boaters mix up portions of the various strategies to suit their particular plans. There are advantages and disadvantages to each option.

We wanted to take a fairly leisurely pace and stop at a few places for some land-touring during our trip south, but we also wanted to avoid the small-boat traffic and the crab pots, yet stay out of the large-vessel traffic lanes, especially during our nighttime passages. Furthermore, we wanted to sail whenever possible and believed that traveling 10-20 miles offshore would find us some breezes. Alas.

What we found was 800 miles of fog, with no wind strong enough to move the poor Fox (say, about 10 knots or more). We left Bamfield BC over 3 weeks ago, and now we are in Monterey, California; in all that time, despite various forecasts of small craft advisories, gale warnings, and everything in between, we have had 40 minutes of breeze at 14 knots on one night, plus about 2 hours of breeze at 15-16 knots while rounding Cape Mendocino. The rest of the time the wind has blown a very weak 10-11 knots for a few minutes at a time, and the vast majority of our time has been spent with 5 knots of wind or less. And did I mention the foul current of anywhere from 1 to 2 knots? If we’d had to sail the whole way south, we’d be in Alaska by now. Oy.

Because our 10-to-20-miles-offshore strategy failed, we tried a closer-inshore route after having left Eureka, CA and rounded Cape Mendocino. Well, we had been thinking about it, but we made the final decision to do it after discussing the issue with the NOAA station in Eureka. They had been warning of several days’ worth of 20-knot winds everywhere, and hazardous seas beyond 8 miles offshore. The nice NOAA forecaster we met* suggested to us that the marginal weather window we were taking to move further south might be best used if we played off the counterclockwise wind eddies that would form closer inshore due to the prevailing northwesterly winds. So, we left Eureka the next morning when the tide was right, the fog gave us ½-mile visibility, and the Coast Guard confirmed that the entrance bar to Humboldt Bay had 4-to-6-foot swells (quite rolly but doable for the Fox; the general rule seems to be that swells of 8 feet or more are too hazardous to attempt, especially if the boater is not very familiar with the area). A couple of hours later as we were bouncing through the confused 8-to-10-foot seas and 16-knot breeze around Cape Mendocino, we heard the Coast Guard announce that they had closed the Humboldt Bay entrance bar because our 4-to-6-foot swells had increased to dangerous 8 and 10-foot rollers. Looks like we had squeezed out in the nick of time. We were lucky that once having rounded The Notorious Cape Mendocino the seas settled down -- but so did the wind. And what increased visibility we had started to enjoy (“Dude! I think I see the shoreline!”) began to disappear as well.

Sailing is like that sometimes. A boater has to exploit the negative. As Donald Rumsfeld, Dark Lord of the Sith (ret.) might put it, you don’t go cruising with the weather you want; you go cruising with the weather you have. Therefore, I shall not complain about how demanding it is to move a boat for over 3 weeks and 800 miles of fog. Instead I now share the way-cool tourist photos I have taken of our once-in-a-lifetime voyage down the West Coast of These United States:

Here's our first glimpse of the great Washington coast, entering the US of A! And here's the oftentimes-photographed rugged coastline of the great State of Oregon: GB shows how happy he is, to have passed the San Francisco Bay Area and begin traveling further south. He has the blond bluffs of San Gregorio as a backdrop to his festive mood: This is a good one - the picturesque entrance to Half Moon Bay, California, with a sailboat leaving the entrance breakwater (I swear, there's a SAILBOAT LEAVING THE BAY in this picture - and it's 500 feet away from where we were anchored): Here's a view of the pretty little community of Santa Cruz, California - setting for the fictional town of Santa Clara in the best vampire flick of all, "The Lost Boys" with Kiefer Sutherland:

* The Eureka office of NOAA is a 5-minute walk from Woodley Island Marina, and they accept drop-in visits from boaters who want to pick their forecasting brains. A boater can learn a lot from these folks in just a few minutes, and it’s totally worth the trip to see their multiple-flat-screen work stations and get real-time interpretation of what’s happening. This is a highly-recommended must-see destination. Get going!

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Barkley Sound to Eureka

We departed Barkley Sound at 0600 amid a fleet of sportboats leaving Bamfield. The fog was thick, with visibility of about 200 feet. The boats were anxious to get to the salmon hunting grounds but held an orderly distance until outside the mouth of the inlet, where they roared off at 25 knots to the offshore areas 25 miles away.

We departed for Newport OR, intending to check back into the county after six months in BC. This distance was about 280 miles. This was our first offshore leg in the Gallant Fox. Although we had previously sailed about 2,500 miles offshore, it was as crew in another boat. When there are just two of you, sailing your boat and your home for the last five years, on the ocean, the stakes become quite a bit different. We had determined a course that would take us between 14 and 25 miles offshore, at about 124deg.30” longitude. This course was outside the crab pot line, but inside the freighter line, which runs at about 125deg.

This section of the trip would had three legs - from Barkley Sound to Newport OR, to Brookings OR (180 miles) to Eureka CA (82 miles). Upon arrival, in Eureka on 8/16 we traveled over 2,200 miles since departing Seattle in January. Following are some comments on trip planning, navigation, crew roles and watch schedules, tourism, and some entertaining encounters along the way.

Trip Planning

There are many ways to plan a trip down the West Coast. We decided upon a mix of single night offshore trips, mixed with a bit of long days coast hopping. The reasons for this are simple - the avoidance of crab pots and the desire to have a bit of tourism. Crab pots run in the tens of thousands from WA to CA, in the 10-70 fathom range. (The Douglass guide published in 2003 indicates the crab pots stop at about 300 feet - 50 fathoms - but we saw them set out to 460 feet - almost 76 fathoms and as far offshore as 15 miles). These pots are terrifying little propeller traps, marked with hard to see floating balls stained dark brown by the ocean. They appear to be everywhere, If you travel at night through one of these fields, you will snag a line on your prop, and that can really ruin your progress. At night or in dense fog when visibility is limited, the crab pots are impossible to spot in time to avoid them, so we prefer staying well outside the crab pot zone. When we have to transit inshore below 50 fathoms, we plan it at daylight when visibility is good, with two folks (that’s the entire crew) on watch.

Navigation

We work with paper charts - bought from Bellingham Chartplotters - a 4 part black and white ¾ reduction. These charts come in big folios and you can just take them out and mark them up. We plan each course upon them, with appropriate headings and course changes. We have a chart plotter, but rather than rely on electronics we use it mainly to just back up the charts. That said, it helps a lot with close inshore navigation and the GPS interface is spot-on accurate.

We traversed three jetties on this segment of the trip - these are long ocean breakwaters, since the above ports are basically the mouths of river opening. We do not like jetties, both in Newport and Brookings we had to fight our way thorough fog, sport boats, and trawlers, all competing for the narrow center line in the jetties, since they are sometimes not fully dredged and have lots of rocks to hit on the side. We departed Newport with 50 feet of visibility. Why? Well - it was sunny when we left the marina, and 1/3 mile away at the jetties it was dense - it is just like that out here.

Radar was invaluable on this trip, and at times in the night we would be tracking up to eight targets within a 4-mile radius, mostly fishing boats on the move, trolling for salmon, or stationary and pulling prawn traps.

We followed the recent discussion in CSBB on MARRP and ACS, and after further discussion with a poster who knows a lot about this stuff, I upgraded my five year old system with a grease pencil to better mark the targets on the screen…..

Crew Roles

Like any cruising couple we have established roles - sometime ours do seem a bit different then most. My wife - MS - is the navigator, and she takes this job very seriously, Prior to departure, the course is plotted on the charts for the entire trip. Alternative ports are identified. While underway, she marks the chart with our actual position and makes appropriate course changes (or leaves me a post-it note about what to do and when, on my watch). Often, she will update our course every hour, to account for the tidal drift. This drift was impressive, and at times took us inshore about one mile in five for some areas of the coast. Also, MS drives the boat into and out of the marinas and slips. It seems a bit rare to us to find women who take this much responsibility. Here are a few examples of things we have seen that seemed a bit odd, sort of along this line of thought….

In Newport we saw a 25,000 pound sailboat getting blown down the dock fairway sideways in 18 knots of wind - the bow had gotten blown off while the helmsman tried to back down the fairway.. His little 4 1/2 foot tall wife was trying to fend the boat off a piling with a boat hook- they bounced and then got off. At the same marina - we watched a skipper cast off the lines from the boat, and then run immediately to the helm to take over from his wife. In Brookings, we watched a 45 foot boat land - there were TWO male crew at the helm, yet they sent a tiny 5 foot tall waif to leap off the boat to handle the dock lines to land the boat by herself…..

When we got our first boat the broker gave us some of the best advice we have ever received - let the woman drive the boat, and let the larger, stronger man jump off and wrestle it into the slip. This has worked out well for us, and we do not understand why men want to always take control, while the woman could probably do it better if given some task other than deckhand….

We have met a number of skippers out here who started out as a couple, but are now singlehanders - maybe if they gave their wives a little more control of the important things, let them build skills, there would not be so much shouting going on…..

My role - I cook, clean and make the drinks…..

Watch Schedules

We keep a pretty informal watch schedule. I am sharp in the morning, and MS is a bit more of a late night person. During the day, we sort of take turns watching, just hanging out, one on and one off, usually for a couple of hours - unless there is a crab pot threat, when we both watch. At 1900, MS will go to sleep to 2100 hours. I will sleep from 2100 to 0000, then take over from about midnight until 0300. And so on - during the day we each get two hour naps. This seemed to work out well for us, and we thought we could probably sustain it long term. The problem is, the nights along the coast are very stressful - you are almost always tracking a target at night and/or moving through fog. There is also the inherent terror that us newbies have of sailing blindly into the night - there are a lot of things to hit out here and we have found that radar does not pick them all up (like, the smallest of the sport fishing boats - another reason to stay well offshore, where the boats must be bigger)….

Tourism

We spent a week in Newport - the moorage rate was $117 and included electricity and internet. We were used to paying $40 a night for a basic dock with no amenities in BC (for those of you not in the know - BC stands for “Bring Cash”). Fortunately, there are so many great places to anchor in BC, we only spent 10 nights in marinas in BC in six months, after we left our winter quarters in Sidney in late March. We loved Newport - the marina had a shuttle, we went to the Aquarium, which was first rate, toured the old town, and resupplied extensively. I even went for a jog along the nature trail - first real exercise in four months.

Brookings was just an overnight stop - we did not even get off the boat. It was memorable because we were boarded by the Coast Guard for a safety inspection. We learned that they board and inspect all boats “that are not from there“ - especially those from out of the state of Oregon. We passed - good thing I kept that old brass bell on board - yes, they asked to see it. But now we are here in Eureka - it is great. The rate for four night was $56 - including power and internet. We have rented a car and will tour this area - lots to see and do….

Entertaining Encounters

When crossing the “Forbidden Zone” opps - wrong movie - my apologies to “Planet of the Apes - I mean the Precautionary Zone, in the middle of the straights of Juan De Fuca - a whale broached 10 feet from the boat - yes - I mean ten feet, we could see the barnacles on his tail - whale watching will never be the same.

We had an 0100 encounter with a longliner 25 miles offshore the WA Coast - we changed course - he changed into us - we changed, he changed - we ended up shining a spotlight on him and hailing him repeatedly on the radio - finally he moved off in front of off, after saying he would pass to the stern…

By the way - the fishing boats we encountered in WA waters were not very friendly, orderly, and disinclined to chat about their course or give way - even when we were trying to get out of their way (they have right of way and they enforce it). Alternatively the fishing boats we encountered in Oregon were friendly, orderly in their movements, and answered the radio - big thumbs up for Oregon professional fisherman….

A 35 foot sport fishing boat roared at us broadside at 20 knots at 0600 18 miles outside the Columbia River - a tuna boat charter heading offshore 25 miles. I had just come on watch. I hailed them at ¼ mile - no response - at 200 years I grabbed the horn - at 100 yards they veered off to pass us 100 feet astern - the paying passengers drinking coffee on the stern, like this was a normal thing to do…..

Summary

Well - there was no wind - I mean no wind on this whole 550 mile leg. We saw 12 knots for less than two hours. The seas were very calm, a bit rolly in places. We roared on at 2700 rpm doing about 7.5 knots. We would like to sail, and left with forecasts that should have given us that opportunity - well - sailing is like that sometimes. You spend 10 years thinking about sailing down the coast and then you end up driving. We don’t believe this north coast is anything to mess with though, and did not loiter around waiting for wind..

We will see about the next leg…..

Eureka Fisherman

After an 80 mile motor down the coast, inside the so called crap pot lane (Not!) we arrived at Eureka. We originally intended to stay here about four days - rent a car, see a few sights and then move south - the next jump to Drake‘s Bay is about 210 miles. Also - we wanted to have some medication mailed to us. So we called from Brookings, and the Pharmacy sad they would send the meds 2 day UPS air - getting it to us here in Eureka by Friday. Well - its now the following Wednesday, and we finally got the meds on Tuesday morning, six days after we ordered. They were misdirected, spent a couple of days in Roseburg, Oregon, then another day or so in Sacramento. In the meantime, our nice weather window closed up. For Wednesday, we have a very tough weather warning for rounding Cape Mendocino. Gale force winds to 35 knots, high wave warning for combined seas to 20 feet. These are projected to continue until later in the weekend. Needless to say, we have decided to enjoy the hospitality of Eureka a bit longer.

So - we are stuck in Eureka - did I mention that MS has gotten sick - her head cold has morphed into a sinus infection and we are off to the hospital tomorrow to try and get some medication. The Woodley Island Marina - where we are at, however, is a very cool place. It is cheap - seven nights was $56, including water and power. Also, although we are the only cruising boat here, the fisherman are very cool. We now know several of them by name, and one (the names are withheld to protect the innocent) came over yesterday and we had a few drinks. He gave me about $100 in salmon and tuna lures, helped me set up a hand trolling line for the boat. He told us that the word on the dock was that we were cool, not like the usually yuppie scum that come through on fancy yachts, who never talk to the fisherman, and generally act a bit stuck up.

Now, none of the yachties that we know are stuck up, but they do all seem to be in a bit of a hurry to get somewhere, so folks don’t seem to take the time to hang out and have a few chats about fishing, weather, or boats sinking. After being here for a week, I have a much better understanding about the fishing boats, their crew, what they do, why they do it, and that makes this whole experience seem much more personal.

The Coolest Dolphinspike You Will See All Day

...or is it a figurehead?  Meet the sailing ketch "Desperado" berthed in Newport, Oregon.  She hasn't sailed much recently, judging from her rig, but looky here:

(For lubbers, a dolphinspike is that rod that goes underneath the bow to the chain running from the hull to the far end of the bowsprit, basically to create an angle and tension that allows all that rigging to support the forward stay that holds up the mast and the forwardmost sail when there's wind force on it.  It supports the bowsprit and allows it to take the weight of a sail further forward than the boat's design would otherwise allow.  If this support structure fails, the forward sail and the mast come tumblin' down.)

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Back in the US of A

The passage from Bamfield BC to Newport, Oregon, took 38 hours: two full days and one night. Coming in to Newport from offshore, we dodged a bazillion crab pots - including a set that some entrepreneur placed right in the middle of the fairway between two entrance buoys. Between the tuna boats and the crabbers, it became clear to me that the US, not wanting Canada to move ahead of them in the resource extraction race, enacted the No Fish Left Behind Act intending to clean out the ocean of all sea life as fast as it can.

They’re doing a good job of it - but we still saw some critters Out There. At 3am, we had a visit from some Pacific white sided dolphins; they showed just enough of themselves to reveal their black and white markings. Nothing lifts a girl’s spirits on a gloomy, foggy night spent dodging other boats, than a visit by a couple of exuberant dolphins taking a quick chuff of air and then zipping back and forth under the hull of her boat. Bonus: the dolphins and porpoise I’ve seen, always roll over slightly to look you in the eye - they seem to want to see you looking back at them and watching them bust their so-superior moves. So if you’re ever visited by a dolphin or porpoise, day or night, lean over the gunwales a bit so they know you’re paying attention to them.

Later, when it was daylight, we saw our first ocean sunfish. And yes; it does look like a giant fish head floating in the water, ineffectually flapping its wee fins, with a very surprised look on its face -- as if its head has just been severed by a shark or a boat propeller or something. Seriously - this fish is ALL HEAD and just bobs along on the surface of the water. According to my Field Guide to All Things Fishy, the ocean sunfish is a type of extremely large puffer fish (grows up to 11 feet; the one we saw was a mere 4 feet or so) with highly toxic flesh that kills you dead, but before you die you remain conscious throughout the whole ordeal so you get the full experience of neurotoxins shutting down your organs one by one. It would make the perfect weapon for a revenge killing. Hmmmm…..

We entered Newport, Oregon on August 6 at 2030, just as the last light of day disappeared. Docked without incident at the South Beach Marina, whose staff helped us with all kinds of things from the moment we landed. They even helped us arrange an appointment with the US Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) to check back in to the US after having been gone for over 6 months. The next day we had a visit from Customs Inspector Jeff, the very nice man with the uniform and the semiautomatic sidearm. Because we had our $25 annual CBP sticker already affixed to the proper window of the boat and the rest of our papers were in order, we totally made Inspector Jeff’s day by having saved him a lot of extra paperwork. Thus our inspection and check-in went smoothly. Newport is one of the two best all-weather ports in Oregon; so if you’re an American arriving from Canada it makes sense to enter the US here. And if you do, please be kind to Inspector Jeff and have your CBP sticker in place to save him some paperwork. You won’t regret it.

Because we had to have our mail forwarded to us, clean the boat, and generally sort things out, we stayed in Newport about a week. Even had time for some tourism. I can heartily recommend a trip to the Oregon Coast Aquarium and the Yaquina Bay lighthouse; and there are many fine restaurants you will no doubt find for yourself if you ask around. Newport is also the first place I have seen more sea lions on one float, than I saw in all of BC since January:

Here are some pictures of birds we’ve seen on the water in our travels, that I was unable to get close enough to until I went to the Oregon Coast Aquarium: a black oystercatcher, a pigeon guillemot, and tufted puffins!

It’s funny, in a way - intellectually GB and I know we’re back in the US, but somehow, after having been on the boat in Canada for so long, Newport still seems to both of us like it’s a foreign country. Maybe it is. Heh.

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Cliche' Photos Celebrating Vancouver Island Circumnavigation

Effinghm Bay, Barkley Sound, site of official completion of circumnavigation.

GB's first haircut - performed by MS (first-time barber) at anchor in Effingham Bay.  Don't make fun of the man's hair or he will cut you with one of them there knives. 

Tzartus Cove in Barkley Sound is one of the last places in this area in which to experience wilderness.  It's shallow, small (room for no more than 3 or maybe 4 boats), a bit rolly from Imperial Eagle Channel, breakers on the surrounding rocky reefs and sea caves.  In short:  go here and stick around for a few days.

And, as always, the sappy cliche' sunset to end the post: 

Heading South Through Washington & Oregon

We left Bamfield in Barkley Sound, BC, on August 5, 2007, at 0600. Environment Canada and NOAA characterized the 1-4-mile visibility fog as “heavy.” The Fox does not like fog very much but it was doable so we left with caution and a good dose of radar - the better to see the buckaroos who were sport fishing for salmon in their power boats. At full throttle. A mere three miles offshore from Barkley Sound, one boat full of these yahoos almost rear-ended us going 20 knots. In fog, I emphasize. What is it with these guys?

As described in previous posts we maneuvered through the usual heavy fogbound commercial traffic entering and leaving the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and had a close encounter with a BOC at the center of the Precautionary Zone. MS took the typical cliché photo of us passing by Tatoosh Island and Cape Flattery, Washington - a hallmark of every boater’s transit of the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

The rest of the day passed uneventfully though visibility generally remained limited. We moved offshore about 15-20 miles to avoid entangling the Fox’s propeller in the many crab pots that commercial fishers have placed between the shore and the 320-foot depth. Night fell, and with the remaining fog restricting visibility, it fell hard. So black, we could not distinguish the line where the water met the sky. And then, at midnight, we encountered the first of the tuna boats. These are commercial trollers and longliners who place their boats on autopilot, drive at 15 knots, and head offshore about 20 to 30 miles, following courses preset into their vessels’ GPS systems - regardless of who might be in the way...like a slow, hapless sailboat just trying to get by. We first encountered such a vessel 20 miles offshore from Grays Harbor, Washington, and it became clear from his radar track that he was on a collision course with us regardless of how we changed position. In addition to the steaming lights we already had on, we turned on every other light the Fox had and used a spotlight to illuminate the main sail. We tried hailing the fishing boat on VHF when he was about 2 miles away to ask him whether he intended to pass us on our stern, or cross our bow. On the third hail (now he was ½ mile away and the third hail was a bit more insistent than the first two) he finally replied that he saw us on his radar and would pass us to our stern. And then?

He crossed our bow with about 100 feet to spare. (Gee, thanks, Mister. And a big middle finger right back at ya.)

Throughout the night we saw lights near and far of all the trollers and longliners huntin’ the elusive tuna. The radar, ‘twas full o’ blips. The next close encounter was on GB’s watch when at 0600 about 13 miles offshore from the Columbia River a sport fishing boat came so close to the Fox that before veering off at the last moment GB could read the logos on the passengers’ baseball caps. And if you knew how poor GB’s eyesight is you’d appreciate how that was more of a George Carlin “near-hit” than a near-miss.

Long story somewhat shorter, we encountered the heaviest boat traffic more miles offshore than we expected, and all of it at night. Another boat’s crew we met later had taken a more inshore route (the “crab pot free zone“) and encountered no tuna boats but had a close call with a commercial tug towing a barge. Moral of the story? If you travel up or down the Pacific Coast, your choice is either dodging larger commercial traffic inshore in low visibility and/or at night; or smaller commercial traffic further offshore in low visibility and/or at night. Pick your poison.

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Awesome Pic Rounding Tatoosh Island & Cape Flattery WA!

Crossed back from Canada into US waters the morning of August 5, 2007.  Visibility was a bit limited by fog.  But that really IS a pic of Cape Flattery and Tatoosh Island from about 5 miles offshore.

Critter Count Part the Second

Bears. Our ursine friends are alive and well and foraging the shoreline in select locations on the West Coast of Vancouver Island. Problem is, the trees grow all the way down to the high water line, so you can’t see any of them unless you venture from the boat by dinghy onto their turf. As if.

OK; we did. Once. Dateline: July 13, 2007. Bunsby Islands, Checleset Bay. West anchorage. This is a good place because (1) this is the last and best wilderness area in all of Vancouver Island, and I wouldn’t lie to you; (2) there’s lots and lots of rocky, ocean-exposed and/or protected shorelines to explore all over the place; (3) there’s fishing potential in the channels by large boat or by dinghy (and yes, we got skunked - again); and (4) in the west anchorage there is a tidal flat that contains the remains of an old Native fish weir -- you know, from back in the days when the salmon were so plentiful you could walk on their backs an never touch water? Yeah - you can see the narrow, shallow place in the tidal flat that those crazy First Nations folks enhanced to form a fish pen, in which to trap-n-nab fish at will when the tide went out.

Difficulty: black bears patrol the little rocky islands hereabouts. Some of you may ask, MS, that’s silly; how could bears get to a little rocky island so far from more extensive tracts of land?

Dude? They swim. Like wolves and cougars swim. Seen it.

So there we are: snug little anchorage, sun shining, us basking in the glow of a successful passage around the ominous Solander Island, the Pacific Ocean surf pounding the rocks a few reefs away, Ancient Fish Weir Of Mystery mere yards away from the Fox. We inflate our red two-person kayak…and pause.

“Dude. What’s that black thing moving around on shore?”

“I dunno. Get the binocs.”

“Bear. Little guy though.”

“What’s that behind him?”

“Bigger bear.”

“You really want to see this fish weir thing?”

“Meh - let’s wait ‘til the next low tide. And then make a lot of noise.”

(Which your intrepid travelers eventually did. And it was great. No humans or bears were harmed in the making of this adventure.)

Dateline: July 31, 2007. Rainy Bay Cove, Barkley Sound. Nicely sheltered little cove, good holding, nearby sport fishing lodge (Sunshine Bay Resort, FYI, Google it) and 14 float cabins for rent. Sport fishers come here year after year - it’s that cool a place. 2007 was the second time we anchored here, and it was quite the nostalgia trip to see it again - this time, in better weather. This is another of those places where the trees come down right to the edge of the salt water’s high tide, and you can’t see past the first few trees into the forest. Your only clues to onshore critter activity are snapping branches and thuds. Rainy Bay Cove has a semi-resident female (I so dislike the word “sow”) black bear we‘d seen in 2004:

“Hey, Babe. Bear on the shoreline sniffing around. Little guy though - yearling.”

“Dude. Look at what’s behind him. Bigger bear.”

“Look at what’s behind HIM. Little fluffy baby bear.”

“So the big guy’s not a guy. Hi, Mom.”

“Wow. She has two kids.”

“No wonder everybody tells you to be careful in the woods. She’s got two kids, they’re all over the place, and if you hike anywhere near them she takes YOUR head off. Glad I’m on the boat, man.”

“How far out do bears swim?”

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Tahsis, BC

During July we moseyed SE down Vancouver Island’s West Coast from sound to sound. There are fine, sheltered anchorages in most places - many with great shoreline exploring opportunities. From north to south: Quatsino Sound, Checleset Bay, Kyuquot Sound (pronounced “ky-OO-kit”), Esperanza Inlet, Nootka Sound. In Esperanza Inlet we began seeing the first signs of “real” civilization - onshore vacation cabins with more square footage than our former house in Seattle, and a few other boats joining us in the anchorages we chose. It was also our first encounter with morning fog, but at least there was enough visibility to travel - albeit with radar engaged - and what fog there was dissipated quickly.

Esperanza Inlet is a calm-water route that takes a boat into Nootka Sound around the back side of big ol’ Nootka Island, the better to avoid those pesky ocean swells that really pile up at the entrances to sounds and bays. In mid-July, the sport fishing was awesome there - or so we heard; we were either en route or got skunked. We chose to nose the Fox down Esperanza Inlet and up into Tahsis Inlet, to the first marina and provisioning opportunity we took since leaving Port Hardy two weeks earlier.*

Historically, Tahsis (pronounced with a short “a” as in “cat”) was the winter home to chief Maquinna and that subsection of the Nootka tribe who resided at Friendly Cove at the entrance to Nootka Sound. (Captain Cook stopped at Friendly Cove and nearby areas to regroup and explore; and Friendly Cove is where a commercial agreement - mediated by Maquinna - was reached that divided the Northwest resource extraction opportunities between Britain and Spain**). In white folks’ time, Tahsis, at the head of a very long fjord/inlet, was home to a sawmill until 1996, when all the trees worth milling had been cut down. The sawmill was essentially Tahsis’s only employer. And when it closed? It took everything with it - including the sawmill building itself - nothing left now but the foundation at the water’s edge and an overgrown employees’ parking lot. Yep; BC resource extraction at its finest. Breaks your heart to look at it.

But Tahsis is still there. Westview Marina in Tahsis is one of the best-run marinas in all of BC - and that’s saying a lot. It is truly a full-service marina in a part of BC that uses the term rather loosely. While there, we drove the marina’s courtesy van to the only market in town (which was almost identical in size and inventory to the markets we saw on Easter Island in the South Pacific) and from there took a look around at the neighborhood. It was sad to see about half of the homes wearing “for sale” signs, but what sets Tahsis apart from so many other company towns after the company has abandoned them, is that the people of Tahsis have not given up. I tell you what, there is no litter on any of the streets; almost every yard - including the ones around the vacant houses - is well tended; and nobody just hangs around on street corners. Everyone, it seems, is keeping busy with something. At least to my turista’s eye, the folks in Tahsis seem to be working together as a real community to try and figure out what to do next. That is a rare sight, and worth going to Tahsis to see for yourself. This is a great little town and it would be a shame to see it die. Right now they seem to be getting by on sport fishing, but some years the fish go AWOL so Tahsis needs something else, and quick. Maybe they can become the Silicon Valley of BC - heck; they have an employee parking lot already built, all they need is a building, and cybergeeks live in buildings 24/7/365 and don’t care what the weather is outside so it wouldn’t matter to them that it rains buckets in Tahsis most of the year. Alternatively, it would be a great place for the film industry to have as headquarters. Come on, people, we gotta make this work - don’t let the folks of Tahsis go to waste. They’re nice.

* We do not stay at marinas often - only about twice a month for a couple of days each time - but after 2 or 3 weeks on the water, the laundry especially starts to pile up and gives the boat a certain skeevy funkiness. I prefer TELLING people I live on a boat, rather than them SMELLING that I live on a boat.

** Why yes, I AM badly paraphrasing the actual fascinating history of this area. Google it for yourself or read the Douglass guide to “West Coast Vancouver Island” for further details and leave me alone. But Big Coolness Factor here: we’ve seen the same places Cook himself explored in the late 1700s with his then-minions William Bligh and George Vancouver, man. Awesome. Except they saw more critters.

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