Around Vancouver Island 2013

Day 30 – August 3, 2013 Saturday

Moe woke up early, as usual, and told me that he and Jon had to drive their car to Ucluelet and would be coming back as soon as possible. Apparently, the connections with the cab driver didn`t work out as planned the night before. I sleepily bid him good bye and went back to sleep. Funny how one can sleep so soundly where there are no disruptions. I didn`t wake up until 9:15! I made my way down to the galley and Kate was still snuggled in her bed, too. We did manage to get ourselves up and dressed by the time Jon and Moe arrived back at Reborn just after 9:30.

Before we left, Jon and Kate took a walk up to the pharmacy to pick up some items that had been forgotten. By 10:25 we were saying goodbye to `Chamade` and untying our lines.

We took the Templar Channel route out of Tofino. It seems an easier route than the one that we took into Tofino, only because there are fewer navigational buoys to watch out for. I took some pictures of the cabins that we had stayed at when we went with my family to Tofino the last long weekend. I remember thinking, while looking out to see from those cabins, that before long I would be out on that ocean and now here I was! It was pretty cool to be looking at the surfing beaches from the other side. Honestly, you wouldn`t even know that there are surfing beaches when looking from the ocean side.

Once we had cleared the last navigational buoy, Jon and Moe set about hoisting the main sail. They did encounter a problem with Jon was tightening the halyard and pulled the top of the sail out of the track. Oops! They got that sorted out, raised the main and and then the jib. We were getting a 10 knot NW wind and were sailing again! One thing we didn`t count on were all the crab traps littering the ocean. It was like a minefield trying to get around all of them. The little devils don`t show themselves very well either, we were just about right on top of some of them before we even saw them. We also had to make our way through the three other sailboats that were coming at us from the opposite direction. At least we could easily see the boats! Once we were clear of the crab traps, it was time to set the mizzen. As noted before, Reborn is a ketch which means she has two masts. The main sail is flown from the main mast and the mizzen sail is flown from the back mast, the jib is flown from the foredeck. So now we were flying all our sails. Yay!

We had warned Kate before she came that the Pacific Ocean has a permanent swell. It doesn`t matter if the ocean is glass, there is still a swell. We mentioned this because Kate has been known to suffer from sea sickness while sailing with us in the past. This time, she came prepared and had donned her motion sickness wrist bands and took some ginger. Both of these seemed to be very effective as she didn`t feel sick as we rode the ocean swells. We were all very happy about that, especially Kate!

We had decided that we would save Ucluelet until Sunday and would head straight to the Broken Group. The Broken Group is a large group of small islands concentrated between Ucluelet and Bamfield. It is a kayakers paradise and many people go there during the summer months to take in the beauty of this place. A couple of years ago, Moe and I had been looking at the Broken Group from land and thought that there is no way a sailboat would ever want to be winding through all those islands. Were we wrong! Here we were winding our way through the rocks, reefs and islands to tuck into Joe`s Bay. As we made our way up Loudon Channel we were joined by a whale. He surfaced and blew only a few hundred feet from our port side.

By 5:32 we were safely in Joe`s Bay with the anchor down. This is another fabulous anchorage. We were surrounded by islands on all sides, having tucked in behind Walsh Island. There were only four other boats in the large bay with us. One of the boats mistakenly thought we wanted to listen to their music but, fortunately, they didn`t share for too long before turning it down.

As we all enjoyed a celebratory drink on the deck, I got our spaghetti dinner started. We would have some of that delicious sourdough bread that I purchased in Tofino with our spaghetti. After dinner, we sat out on the deck enjoying our peaceful surroundings and catching up with each other.