Adventures up the west coast in 2023 - "Round the corner
After a wonderful whirlwind trip to see Nigel and Theresa on the Shuswap we woke with a grand plan for the next two weeks. Head up to Ucluelet, sail out for 100 NM and then back again and then bask in the victory of having spent time ‘offshore’
The first challenge though was as ever the hardest; taking the plunge and getting off the dock. With much trepidation, and in building winds, we left our secure berth at RVYC and headed out round trial island. The wind was a steady 20+ knots blowing from the South west and once we were settled we partially unfurled the Genoa. With that out we then thought about getting out the mainsail. Having had a good experience filling the main whilst hove to the weekend before, we thought we would give that a try for unfurling the sail. After two pirouettes however we decided that perhaps it’s not possible to unfurl a mainsail hove to! We shall see!
We carried on under motor and Genny for a while but then, realizing it was hard to keep the Genny filed and not wanting to tempt fate by flogging it to death on our first day out, we furled it again and chugged on keeping a respectable 7 knots through the water. Heading through Race Passage we were pleasantly surprised that the actual passage seemed fairly benign. We were however somewhat taken aback by the short steep seas that greeted us the other side. We had finally started to learn the problems of experiencing wind over tide waves. With the wind freshening to 30 Knots, we soon found ourselves ‘hobby horsing” as the boat climbed over short, steep 6 foot waves. Still making a steady 6 knots however we butted on into the wind aiming for Wolf bay in Beecher cove occasionally burying our nose in the next wave.
As the waves broke over the bow we realized the folly of having the SUP still strapped up front and also realized that in the steeper seas, the anchor should perhaps be better secured (tips for tomorrow!)
. Looking for a spot to drop the hook we realized that chances were we would still be fighting some strong winds wherever we stopped though and so gave ourselves plenty of space dropping in 15 feet with 150 feet scope for good measure. Once safely on the hook we breathed a sigh of relief and started to worry about the following day.
Our plan was to aim for Port Renfrew, leaving early to hopefully avoid the afternoon blow. We had agreed however that if we pull out and just
end up bouncing around in short steep waves again though, we will call it quits and head back round the corner, or into Beecher Bay again.