This was my first adventure into a real ocean on a sail boat. Didn't know if I was going to get sick or even handle living on board a boat for almost a week. Luckily the boat was big ... 54 ft and quite stable in the 24 ft swells we had on the first 2 days. Mike is an experienced sailor and during the trip I learned a lot about how to sail and what not to do. Mike even let me plot the course on the chart which almost proved to be a disaster since I was steering us into a rocky cove instead of the harbour. It was an interesting trip with 2 hours on 2 hours off although I never really rested my 2 hours off.
The trip was from August 23, 2009 to August 28, 2009.
Aug 23 - Tahsis to Hot Springs Cove ... Entering the Pacific we were greeted by whales and 24 ft swells
Aug 24 - Hot Springs Cove to Spring Cove (Ucluelet) ... Last day of the swells with amazing surf on the shore
Aug 25 - Spring Cove to Bamfield ... Almost steered us into the wrong port due to miss reading the maps
Aug 26 - Bamfield to Sooke ... Straight run under motor the entire way since the wind dropped
Aug 27 - Sooke to Active Pass ... Good day of wind, no wind, too much wind and ferry traffic
Aug 28 - Active Pass to Bowen .... Very little wind which made for a relaxing, but boring trip
Really the first Video in the series:
Beautiful stream just outside of Tahsis ... lot of dead salmon after the run earlier in the year
Spirit Of Freedom at it's summer dock
This zodiac does 70 MPH and has straps for the helmets so you dont bounce around too much ... little bit faster than the 7-10 knots we will be doing
Leaving the gas station at Tahsis ... Vicky and Lisa were about to start their trip home
The Pacific is a couple of hours straight ahead
Looking back towards Tahsis after we had been on the journey for an hour
At the helm for one of my shifts ... 2 hours on 2 hours off ... long days
The Pacific is in the distance
Mike captaining the boat
Mike doing what he does best
For a couple of days we were in 20-24 ft swells and every few seconds all you could see was water ... a few seconds later all you could see was sky
Only Sky a few seconds after the Only Water shot ... couple of days of this can make anyone sick
Nothing but water ahead of us ... about to get pretty rough for a few days, but we were on the edge of the storm keeping it at a safe distance.
It is lonely out here ... next stop could be Hawaii
Entering the Pacific we saw the first of many whales
The swells looked a lot bigger when you were going up and down on them ...
The swells are down and it was finally safe to go outside without being strapped on
Surf around Long Beach ... the start of the storm season and the really big waves
Rocks ahead causing a lot of surf
Rocks creating surf ... have to stay away from them
Pod of whales having fun by the shore
Whale slapping it's tail
A whale jumping for joy
Whale breaching ... there were so many that day
Mike let me manage the charting and figuring out where we were ... almost put us on the rocks by transposing numbers in the coordinates
The Canadian Navy on maneuvers around Esquimalt
Canadian Navy speeding away ... obviously we weren't a huge threat to Canadian security
Cruise ship docked at Victoria Harbour
Happy seals playing as we went past them ... they would swim a little beside us before getting bored and heading off
One of the many seals that decided to pop up and check us out
I can see why it is called Active Pass ... in addition to the 2 ferries there were half a dozen other boats trying to transition the pass
Queen Of Westminster in Active Pass ... good thing we could listen to the radio and know it was coming up behind us
The Costal Inspiration in Active Pass
Tug towing a couple of huge barges with trees on them
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