So You Thought YOU Had Problems

So, a few days after our "adventure" on the high seas (I once thought adventure meant something positive), I read the following article in the local newspaper.

HEAVY SEAS AND HIGH WINDS PROVED TOO MUCH FOR TWO SAILORS NEAR HAIDA GWAII, FORCING THEM TO SEND OUT A CALL FOR HELP.

The sailors on board sent a mayday distress call at approximately 8:10 p.m. Monday night, after they lost their rudder, engine and sails in 80-kilometre winds and four metre seas, approximately 48 km south of Haida Gwaii Islands, in Queen Charlotte Sound.

The call was received at Joint Rescue Coordination Centre Victoria and a Buffalo search and rescue airplane and a Cormorant helicopter from 19 Wing Comox were dispatched. The Buffalo aircraft arrived on scene first and dropped a two-way radio by parachute to re-establish communication with the sailors who had lost their radio shortly after sending the mayday.

“We assessed the situation and determined it was very dangerous for the people on board,” said Captain Jean Leroux, aircraft commander of the Cormorant. “We tried to put a Search and Rescue Technician (SAR Tech) on the deck, but it was impossible due to the masts, loose cables and torn sails. We lowered the SAR Tech into the water to the aft of the boat and he swam to get on board.”

The sailors were able to throw a guideline to Richardson and help him aboard. Once on the boat, Sgt. Richardson and Flight Engineer, Corporal Kent Campbell aboard, the Cormorant worked together to hoist the men from the rolling ship approximately 55 feet into the hovering helicopter. Both men were flown to Port Hardy.

 They lost a rudder, sail and engine. Their radio cut out after they sent out a Mayday. 4 meter waves, 80 km winds. They had to be rescued by helicopter in the middle of the night. I feel like a piker with my humble experience, but still shaken nonetheless.

Here is a video taken of the rescue of the Magnolia by a passenger on a cruise ship that had moved in to assist with the rescue. Not terribly clear but this isn't Hollywood. It sure gives a sense of those stormy seas. Watch it full screen.

...and the Worst of Times

A week after the first overnight trip to the north side of Lasqueti Island, armed with a brand new dinghy, we went back out to once again attempt to visit Jedediah Island. We had a great sail under northwest winds across the Strait of Georgia and down the Sabine Channel between Lasqueti and Texada, to what I hoped would be our anchorage in White Rock Bay. To our delight we had it to ourselves, for awhile anyway until later that evening an American sailboat arrived for the night. This visitor, as well as not a few others we see, was NOT flying the courtesy Canadian flag, which infuriates our captain to no end.

We rowed in to shore, the new dinghy performing admirably, and checked out the landscape including the next door Deep Cove, a well protected and popular anchorage. Stern tied anchoring seems to be popular on this coast - new to me, from Lake Ontario sailing days. Jedediah is now a park island so there are chains along the rocks at the side of the cove to tie up to, and ashore there are maintained pathways and outhouses. From Deep Cove a path leads through the tall tree forest through a huge meadow to the other side of the island where the original homestead still stands looking west over Home Bay, which at low tide drains completely to mud.

The previous owners of the island were the Palmers and Mary Palmer has written a book about her time on the island as a homesteader called Jedediah Days: One Woman's Island Paradise. Although she had bought the island many years before, it was not until she, who ran a plant nursery, and her husband Al, who was a fisheries biologist with the University of Washington, retired in their 50's, that they moved to the island to live full time. There they grew gardens and orchards and raised goats and chickens and did the whole homesteading thing while entertaining a constant stream of visitors. In the early '90's, after 20 years of living and working on Jedediah, they found that their 70-something selves could no longer cope with the demands of running a productive farm and they looked to sell it. They wanted it to become a park, a place where the public could enjoy it forever.

It was not easy working through the negotiations to make Jedediah a public park, and it was not until the estate of the late Dan Culver donated $1.1 million to the cause that things started to move forward and the government put up much of the rest of the money for the purchase price and to maintain it as part of the British Columbia Park System. Dan Culver was a wilderness adventurer and environmentalist who had worked to save several key locations in British Columbia from destruction. He was the first Canadian to climb Mount Everest and K2, the world's highest peak, although sadly he also perished in a fall on that mountain. He had directed in his will that part of his estate should go to protection of some wilderness area on the coast.

The family home, which was built way before the Palmers arrived still stands, although crumbling. They have put fencing mesh over the doors and windows to keep people out and signs tell you that it would be unsafe to enter. You can peek in the windows and make out the kitchen area, still with its rusting out wood stove. A workshop out building still has tools and metal bits all over the walls and work benches. An old tractor and other farm machinery lie abandoned in what looks to be a former barn.

We stayed in White Rock Bay for 2 nights and one morning I poked my head up into the cockpit, looked around and saw this big training schooner anchored in Bull Passage just outside our Bay. Later that day the invading flotilla arrived - 7 schooners (a post race get together) and a trawler moved into our bay and stern line anchor rafted along one wall of the bay.

The weather had been great but on Friday, the day we were to go home, we awoke to cloudy skies and a forecast of mix of cloud and sun with some showers later in the day. Winds had shifted to the south and tides should be in our favor for an 11:00 departure. All was well as we sailed up Sabine Channel between Lasqueti and Texada. As we rounded the rocky island of Fegan Light I was delighted to see dozens and dozens of seals reclining on the rocks with a lone eagle standing guard on the highest point of the little island. Big grin on my face - which would be the last for some time to come.

The wind had died slightly towards the end of the Channel but as we rounded Lasqueti Island and headed across the Strait of Georgia it picked up and we raised the sail. All was well and we were sailing along just fine until BOOM. The sail let go and started flapping around wildly. We started the engine and hauled it down and headed through the winds and choppy seas, 30 miles across. The Nonsuch is a single sail cat rig and if you lose the sail, that's it, nothing to stabilize the boat and no way to get any speed. The south wind got stronger and stronger and for hours we were able to go no faster than about 2 1/2 knots. The seas were dark and churning so bad it looked to me like a vast top-loading washing machine. We bounced around and with every bump and crash I became more and more terrified.

The wind vane at the top of the mast disappeared. The depth sounder stopped working - at 395 feet depth not a particularly big deal but I had one eye on the mast as the boat swung from side to side and one ear on the engine. What next? I wondered, holding on tight to avoid being thrown around the cockpit.

Behind us an enormous band of black storm clouds settled along the islands we had just left. Ahead, a long way off, was Vancouver Island, our destination, where some blue sky was starting to show through the clouds. As I watched the churning churning water and the waves coming at us I thought, "OK, I get it. It's me, the human, who doesn't belong here on this ocean. This body of water deserves respect. I get it."

Several hours later the winds shifted a bit, not quite so directly across the beam and we were able to move a little faster. As we got closer to Vancouver Island the clouds parted and the sun came out which helped the mood a little. We were in the middle of a Qualicum wind, a wind pattern of southeast winds that can increase sometimes unexpectedly from 10 to 40 knots in 15 minutes. Our engine kept chugging along, the mast held, and 7 hours later we pulled into our slip at the Deep Bay marina, with steady captain and traumatized crew.

We weren't exactly sure what had happened to the sail until later when we laid it out flat in the backyard. There's a big L-shaped rip in it and the frayed remains of one of the ripped out lines. Our sailing season appears to be over, as it will take many weeks to have a new sail made.

I have yet to get over this "adventure".

It Was the Best of Times...

For a year now I have looked across the Strait of Georgia at Lasqueti Island, with its backdrop of the much higher Texada Island and wondered what lay behind, between the two. For our first overnight sail we decided to find out.

This was to be the shakeout cruise, to get to know the boat and make the inevitable lists of things we could use, adjust where things are stowed, and generally see how things work. I had heard from a couple of people about a certain Jedediah Island that lay over there and was now a provincial park, described as "magic". So we packed up, provisioned for a two night cruise and off we went to make the 30 mile crossing of the Strait.

Orca sausages sunning themselves on the rocks

Paul Island - Texada in the background across Sabine Channel

It was a great time. The weather was great, lots of sun and warmth; the waters on the north side of Lasqueti saw many islands beside Jedediah, which were lovely and the tall mountainous facade of Texada across Sabine Channel was dramatic. We anchored in Scottie Bay the first night and as we got settled, we noticed that the dinghy looked a little weird. Turned out there was a gap between the inflatable part and the floor. It had come apart and as time went on, one of the wooden floorboard sections started floating across the Bay, adding to all the other deadhead debris that you have to watch out for when sailing in these waters. It appeared we were now towing a corpse, so no terra firma landings for us on this trip.

R.I.P.

 Speaking of deadheads, we saw a lot of these floating logs, that reveal themselves (hopefully before you hit them) to a greater or lesser degree depending on tides. We saw this boat salvaging a particularly huge one that had come to rest against the rocky shore of one of the islands. The boat is about 25 feet, the log must be 3 times that long.

The next day we sailed down through the islands, went around Jedediah, checked out the limited selection of protected anchorages, and generally had a great time. We went back to Scottie Bay for the second night, anchoring again in the outside, less protected area, away from the multiple masts in the inside. One couple exploring the bay in their dinghy came over to say hello. They mentioned that they had sailed their boat to New Zealand (and presumably back). They were smiling and appeared sane enough, although who could tell. My only reaction to that tale was, NIGHTMARE.

That night the water on the bay was smooth as glass and the sunset was outstanding. A seal and a couple of otters swam around us. Would have been completely peaceful but of course the humans had to fuck things up as usual, as somewhere, at some cottage way across the water, the faint boom bass of techno dance music played non-stop till the wee hours. Oh well, try not to let that rain on this particular parade. The next morning we headed back across the Strait of Georgia to our home base at Deep Bay marina. It had been fun but I was feeling like 2 nights is enough for me. I've had enough of this. I want a shower and my own bed.

However, a strange thing happened. Once back at home (all clean) I started pouring over the cruising guides and charts, thinking about the next trip.

To be continued...

The Stones at 50

Sebastian Kruger

Kay

My mother-in-law Kay died. Howard's mother, The Boys' grandmother.

She was 97, although she was a true girl after my own heart as she never admitted to anything older than 92. She didn't like getting older, not one little bit.

She had lived in Victoria for many years but for the past year or so she had been living in an assisted living home in Parksville, "just down the road" from us, so I've been able to see her much more often than before. Up till now we've never lived in the same province, and at times not even in the same country. For the past 7 years, it hasn't been easy being so far away.

I knew her in the last third of her life, and in past days as I've been sorting through the boxes of belongings I've been looking through all the pictures, searching for images and clues to the life she lived before I knew her. Even though it's fleeting and I know I'm making things up, it's been fascinating.

In Kay's final days and hours, I sat in her room thinking all the time about my own mother and her death, as well as my father who died even younger. Leafing through the photo albums and the piles of unsorted snapshots in the proverbial shoeboxes, I have been struck by how similar all those pictures were to those of my mother. The same clothes and hair and background living rooms, and families in front of the family home with the street number prominently displayed in the background. The family dog occasionally taking center shot. The black and whites, edged with wide bands of white, glued or placed in little corner triangles on thick black paper. Same poses. Most of the photos had people in them and they were invariably lined up in some way, all facing the camera. They made me smile, especially the ones from youth. Four or five young people, boys and girls, posed in front of a car by some kind of scenery. Pictures of young women in bathing suits, poses on rocks, face up to the sun shining on the sides of their faces. Pictures of Aunt Gay, curious and adventurous, as a young woman reminds me of Maristella.

Kay and her sister Gay (who died about 6 years ago at the age of 89) were great beauties and right up to the end of their lives had very upright, almost proper demeanors, hair always done, manicured, smartly dressed with jewelery. I found pictures of them as children, more of them as young women, newlyweds, in Kay's case a young mother. I identified their own parents and started picking them out of the pictures (one look at their mother and you could see where that "demeanor" comes from), and saw many many more faces, most unlabeled. I found the story in pictures and documents of a beloved younger brother who went off to war at age 19 and was killed the following year in Europe. Letters between the father and the military show the anguish and the need for answers and recognition. Lives with laughter and great sadness as well.

It has helped me tremendously to look at these photos and to visualize these younger lives. Whatever works, I suppose. I feel like I have a hole in my heart and I know from experience that that hole never ever goes away.  And it doesn't matter what age you are (or I am) when you leave.

Katharine Mary (nee Heming) Brown - 1914-2012