Sunshine Coast Part 2

4/13/11

Motoring along at 7 knots

Thunder and Tarnation!  Huh?  Well, it might not be thundering, but it sure is raining and windy, days at a time, I think.  I’m writing at Campbell River, where they have nice showers, laundry, and wireless Internet.  Right behind Discovery Marina, where I’m staying, is a big mall with two extra-large supermarkets (think Wal-Mart type of stores), as well as a Blockbuster Video store and Canadian Tire, which is a like an Orchard Supply on steroids…lots to keep me entertained and supplied while it’s raining, cold, and windy here.  There’s even a dive shop, where I bought a weight belt.

I’m awaiting mail from brother Rick, who forwarded a whole collection of it to Campbell River.  It has apparently arrived today, and I have to pick it up tomorrow.  It cost well over $100 for Rick to send it, and I still owe UPS another $30 on top of that before I can get it.  Yikes!  Looks like I won’t be doing anymore Fed X deliveries until I reach Alaska, which will then be parcel post.  Sending stuff internationally is expensive.

Anyway, going back to the 3^rd of April and back in Pender Harbor.

After a really nice evening at the Garden Bay Pub, watching the blues band play their hearts out, and watching the sizable crowd cheer them on, I motored my dinghy back to BB and called it a night. That night, it blew hard out of the southeast.  My boat was docked perpendicular to the wind, so it bounced a bit, but other than that, it was a restful, yet very cold night.  The next morning I took a shower, did some laundry, cleaned the boat up a bit, and took off to head to Hardy Island anchorage. There was no wind and it was only a short 5-mile trip.

Hardy Island anchorage is really a spot surrounded by 4 different islands.  It’s a relatively big and deep bay – with only one other boat anchored there.  I was surprised at how deep the bay was until I got really close to shore. It took me awhile to figure out where to anchor.  I had one false start when my anchor was dragging, with not a lot of room to spare.  I winched it back up (thank God for the windlass) and picked another spot, which had better ground for the anchor to work with.

A comment:

Hardy Island Rock Excavation

The further north I go, the deeper the bays and anchorages are (and the more steep and magnificent the fiords).  Once I get to Desolation Sound, deep coves and bays will be the norm.  My next single-handed challenge is stern-tie to the shore.  That is where I anchor the boat relatively close to shore (at least in 50' of water), make sure the hook is set in the rapidly reclining ground, then row to shore (make sure the dinghy is in the water even before I begin this exercise) with the bitter end of my 600’ spool of yellow polypropylene/Dacron line rigged up on my stern pulpit, run around a tree or big boulder and either tie it off or run it back to the boat’s stern.  I’ve already set the spool up already to use and just to modify it a bit to spool out nice and easily.

Hardy Island was interesting, but not enough to get out my kayak and explore.  Plus it was just too darn cold.  So I got myself snug and warm in my boat and read.  When I first got there, I heard this big whistle, and saw that there was a big earth-mover on top of a cliff digging for big boulders used for building breakwaters.  The area immediately around it was an eyesore.

The next morning, we left early and headed up the 30 miles to Lund.  After a couple of hours, it was blowing out of the southeast (downwind) strong enough, that I turned off the engine and sailed.  The next few hours, I got to see how Blue Bossa handles in heavy winds.  The southeast wind picked up more and more so by the time we were rounding Point Grief (where does the explorer Vancouver pick up these depressing names?), the wind was clocking 25-35 knots, the boat hitting speeds of 8 and 9 knots.  The autopilot wasn’t up to that kind of puffy conditions, so I steered in the cockpit, where, with cable steering, I had much more control (steering in the pilot house is hydraulic).  It was quite exciting.  On a broad reach (wind a quarter to the stern), I had the big 150 jib up along with a full mainsail.  The wind would get these huge puffs and the boat would want to round up, but I was able to keep it under control.  The jib definitely needed to be rolled up a bit, along with the mainsail.

Eventually, the course dictated that I head dead-down wind, so I rolled up the jib.  Even with the mainsail out, I was still doing 6-1/2 to 7 knots.  I wanted to go wing-and-wing (jib on one side, the mainsail on the other), but with the puffy conditions and heavy wind and me being single-handed and an old fart to boot, I opted to be on the conservative side.  I didn’t want to break anything (me), or lose anything (me) overboard. 

Comment:

That 150 roller-furler jib in heavy winds is a real handful.  I have another older jib that I store up in the bow that is a 120 (smaller), which I will definitely put to use when I head south from Alaska out to the Charlotte Islands and on the west coast of Vancouver Island.  The 150 is a better sail in light conditions, prevalent to summertime inside-passage conditions.

Lund - the next day was sunny!

Eventually we got to Lund, where we were able to snag a spot on the commercial boat dock (Lund only has two docks).  I expected to pay a large sum of money there, but, to my surprise, the bill only came out to $35 (compared to $65 in Pilothouse Marina).  Lund is a very small landing that’s famous for being at the end of Highway 101.  After that, it’s 4-wheel drive, boat, or airplane (well, maybe horse, mule, walking…) to get to anyplace north of the coast.  I’ve been there, years ago, when my family and I chartered a small boat from Comax to visit Desolation Sound.  Lund is hardly called a harbor as it barely dents into the shoreline.  To keep away chop, they’ve got 3 floating breakwaters.  Even the southeasterly, that was still blowing hard (side shore), had little influence on how the boats behaved inside. 

One of many anchorages in Gorge Harbour

The next day, after a nice breakfast at the local bakery, we headed northwest for the 15 miles to Gorge Harbour, which placed us in Desolation Sound.  It is on Cortes Island.  The name derives from its narrow steep-sided (cliff) entrance called the Gorge.  Inside, there’s a choice of about 3 or 4 different anchorages, and a very small resort/marina.  The anchorages are limited by the fact that the good ones are covered with fish farms.  I ended up on the northwest side of the bay, which is very well protected.

The next day, after a quick scout in the inflatable at the entrance, I was back on BB when a 30’ sailboat motored by with the mainsail still up.  Two women and a man were on-board, one of the women asking me if I could help them, because they couldn’t get their mainsail down. 

The crew on the boat, with mainsail still up, grabbed a mooring that was obviously placed there for the boat.  The man and one of the women needed to get off the boat in time to catch the ferry to take them to Campbell River, taking the boat’s dinghy and leaving the last woman to figure out how to get the mainsail down.  I motored over in my dinghy to assist.

Cliff side in entrance - suppose to be gliffs

I suspected and was proven to be correct that the halyard, an old steel cable arrangement, had jumped the sheave, which is at the top of the mast, and had jammed between the sheave and sheave box.  The only way to lower the mainsail was to climb the mast and unhook the shackle holding the sail to the halyard.  The woman’s name was Debra, a middle-age woman with some experience with boats, but not enough to keep her out of trouble, having not put a lot of money into the boat (shoestring budget).  Her crew, that abandoned her, had no experience.  To make matters worse, all of the running rigging on the boat was really old, and all of the winches were single speed that were at least 40+ years old, the age of the boat.

I was scratching my head into how to get to the top of the mast with just her and myself to do it.  No lightweight young studs around to get pulled up, or pull themselves up.  Luckily, a white-haired and bearded gentleman named Herbert, coming back from work on his aluminum skiff, did have a lot of sailboat experience, knew Debra, and was willing to help out. He had an Alberg 35 moored nearby, so he grabbed his bosun’s chair (a canvas and board affair that allows one to be hoisted up a mast by a halyard).  Both he and I were well over 200 lbs, not something to be taken lightly when being hoisted up a mast with old halyards.  So we elected to hoist up Debra, who was hesitantly willing (after all, it was her boat).  Luckily, the boat had both a jib halyard and a spinnaker halyard, so while I was cranking from the cockpit the spinnaker halyard that I lead aft, Herbert cranked from the jib winch the jib halyard.  With two halyards and two big guys cranking, we had Debra up the mast and she quickly unhooked the shackle and the mainsail slid down.  It was lucky that there wasn’t much wind in the cove, otherwise it would have been dicey with a flogging mainsail.

Entrance looking outward from Gorge Harbour

That done, I was invited to Herbert’s house to have a drink with he and his wife Windy and Debra (after she was done putting away her boat).  Herbert is a house designer much like my brother Rick.  But instead of specializing in high desert, energy efficient houses, he designs NW waterfront houses like his home-built house, which has as small a carbon footprint as possible; many of his houses are “off the grid”, ie: solar panels and anything else to keep them independent of outside energy.  His house was up about 50 feet from the water, nestled on the steep shoreline, and had a beautiful view of the bay.  Herbert and Windy were very gracious hosts and Debra and I ended up having dinner there, joined later by a friend of theirs, who circumnavigated the world.  We had a lively discussion of sailing and cruising, of Canadian and US politics (luckily they leaned the same way I did), health care, etc., all the while sipping some great wine and enjoying a delicious dinner.

Chart of Gorge Harbour

The next day, Herbert zipped by (again from work) and said that the folks at Gorge Harbour were having a show at Gorge Hall (located at the little resort/marina close to where I was anchored), saying that a vaudeville show was being presented.  I jumped at the opportunity to watch that as well as get to know what the community was like.

The hall was small but was able to hold all of the groups of people (and lots and lots of kids) to watch the “Lasqueti Circus”, which was a group of about 25 people from the island of Lasqueti, west of Texada Island, north of Nanaimo.  They all had different talents, about 15 of them would play different brass or string instruments to back everyone up, while the rest would pantomime, act out skits, sing, dance, juggle, and joke, all in good clean Canadian fun. None were exceptionally skilled (juggling, dance and acrobatic was amateurish at best), but they all had a lot of fun, and the audience really enjoyed it, especially the kids.

I had a good chance to view the people who live on Cortes Island, who seemed to be very honest folk wanting to live outside the normal communities and live a much more simple life raising their kids. Probably most of the kids were home schooled.  It may have been the type of entertainment that was being offered, but I didn’t get the feeling that there were many retired people, but mostly younger families, much different than Friday Harbor, which are mostly retired people.

In regards to Lesqueti Island, where the performers had all come from and who were touring through much of the big islands in the Desolation Sound area, I had missed visiting it, much to my regret, as I was aiming to go to Smugglers Cove.  As I understand it, the beauty of the island is spectacular.  I was tempted to go back south to visit it, but it would have taken a lot of time and fuel to go there and back, so I’ll have to visit it some other time.

Rebecca Spit

Because a southeasterly was coming, I elected the next day to leave Gorge Harbour and head to Rebecca Spit, on Quadra Island, which lies on the other side facing Campbell River.  Rebecca Spit is somewhat scenic, but is huge and not much to do, plus, when I got there, it was starting to blow.  I had enough time to zip over in my inflatable to check out the two small marinas in Heriot Bay, about a mile away from where I was anchored.  The main marina looked abandoned and totally run down, while the other one was a resort that was closed.  The next two days (Saturday and Sunday) was spent in the boat waiting for the SE gale to wind down.  Top wind speeds were gusting to 40 knots, but the boat, other than tacking back and forth, held anchor nicely.  I did a lot of reading and listening to music.

Rounding Cape Mudge - fresh snow on Vancouver Island

On Monday, the sky cleared momentarily, the wind shut down, and we shuffled around Cape Mudge and ventured up Discovery Passage to Campbell River…and here we are.

Discovery Marina in Campbell River - in between squalls

Campbell River / Discovery Passage

While we’re here, I’m hoping to get a little done on the boat, if the weather ever gets better.  I have to fix a cap rail which hinges over the transom door, as well as fix a cockpit locker door, all of which I should be able to do on my own.  The alternator has so far run very well, and on my second day anchored at Gorge Harbor, I ran my auxiliary generator in conjunction with a 30 amp portable electric charger, to create a good charge on my batteries.  So, electrically, I think I’m in pretty good shape (knock on wood).  After talking with Herbert, and discussing where to put it, I think I’m going to get some solar panels from West Marine and install them on top of my dinghy davits.  Clear exposure to the sun, out of the way, and lots of room makes this a viable way to keep my charge up without having to run the engine.  With summertime around the corner, it will take more electricity to run the refrigerator, so having solar panels will really help.  Another project to do in Ketchikan, probably!

Canadian comment: 

1)    I’m starting to catch on saying “eh?” all of the time…the Canadians here have such a cute accent, it’s easy to fall into that almost singsong way of speaking, versus the much flatter vocal inflections of west-coast Americans.  I won't even compare it to "quaint" southern accents.

Route - Nanaimo to Campbell River

2)    The further north I go, the nicer and less bureaucratic the people get.  Must be from getting away from US influence?  Or is it just getting away from civilization?

Maybe I’ll find out.