The Blue Water Sailing Club’s (BWSC) Atlantic Canada Cruise 2024-2025 (ACC) was an unprecedented undertaking, a first of its kind in the club’s history. Four vessels—Going Merry (a Hallberg-Rassy 42), Grayling (Sabre 38), Truant (Southern Cross 31), and Avocet (Oyster 41)—set out from Boothbay Harbor, Maine, on August 15, 2024, immediately following the annual “Maine Cruise.” Despite the varying capabilities of the boats and the diverse experience levels of their captains and crews, not one captain had previously sailed their boat north of Halifax. The fleet was later joined by a fifth boat, Walkabout (a Sabre 38), in Baddeck, Nova Scotia, in June 2025. The expedition eventually concluded for Avocet in Boothbay Harbor on August 17, 2025, after a 49-hour sail from Halifax (Rogue’s Roost).

Truant was single-handed, more often double-handed and occasionally had three onboard. With a 25-foot waterline, Truant proved that many of our smaller BWSC boats, if sailed by inspired skippers, can manage this trip. Typical daily mileage was limited to usually not more than 25 nautical miles—and often considerably less daily mileage than previous Club trips to Nova Scotia and the Bay of Fundy. Alternating lay days and short legs appealed to many participants.

A number of things made the trip unique for the Club. The cruise was long. We sailed 2,200 nautical miles. We were at sea for 83 days. We saw 47 harbors. It spanned two summers. We went to three countries.

The Atlantic Canada Cruise (ACC) was an expedition-type club cruise. There were three overnight passages. The last passage (284 nautical miles) had two back-to-back overnights. Matinicus to Shelburne, N.S., St. Pierre to Sydney and Halifax to our various homeports. These passages made possible a detailed exploration of the Atlantic Coast of Nova Scotia, the Bras d’Or Lakes, the southern coast of Newfoundland including many of its magnificent fjords, several of the islands along Newfoundland’s southern coast including Burgeo and Ramea, and the French islands of Miquelon-St. Pierre.

Days off the boats were spent exploring these harbors and hiking in some really spectacular places. We were greeted warmly and with much curiosity everywhere—though many places were without a population or road access.

One fellow in Rose Blanche, eager to show us his way of life, took a few of us jigging for cod. The catch fed the entire group. These were fish you hook as soon as you drop the hook. So, we got equipped. In the fjords, birds perched high in the surrounding cliffs were answering my son’s cellphone bird-identification app. It was acoustically as impressive as listening to a concert in Carnegie Hall. And very remote. Our hiking teams, often exploring simultaneously different ridges, took handheld radios as help could only come from the anchored boats. Much of this was captured by Homer, which was our squadron’s only drone after the loss of its sister drone.

Nature was front and center. A small group of pilot whales repeatedly crossed within feet of our bows in 5- to 6-foot swells en route from Piccaire (Pink Bottom) to Brunette Island, Newfoundland. This was a different behavior than what I have seen crossing Georges Bank where larger groups of whales have flanked Avocet on both sides as if in a convoy. This was purposeful and playful activity by very large mammals. To finish that day at anchor at Brunette Island (en route to Fortune, Newfoundland), locals came over in their skiff, chatted it up, asked where we were from and gave us a bag of their freshly harvested scallops. They were the best scallops I have ever eaten. Caribou were grazing unperturbed on a hill in front of us at this spot. No roads. No bridges. No light pollution. Virtually no people. A few fishing huts. Elsewhere others in our group were given jars of moose meat and moose sausage. A delicious and unexpected appetizer for the group. Tasted like flank steak. Coming off the sea we were not quite tourists nor were we mere transients. The relationship was one of mutual interest and respect; we shared the sea. They were as curious about us as we were of them.

The composition of participants was another somewhat unique feature. For only five boats, there was an extraordinary number and mix of people of various ages, occupations and familial relation. By one estimate, 50 folks sailed various parts of the trip. Nine married couples. Three sets of brothers. Two sets of brother-sister pairs. A son. Cousins. Uncles. High school buddies. College buddies. New BWSC members. Old sailing friends. New relationships were made and old relationships were nourished. The different types of sailing permitted (and sometimes required) different sets of crew along the route. The number of participants coupled with the remoteness of many of our crew points in Newfoundland and parts of Nova Scotia added complexity to our crew changes and fresh faces to different legs. There was also continuity in the group. For three of our original four boats, many who crewed in 2024 returned to crew in 2025. One returning non-member crew sailed on two different boats.

The trip was organizationally unique. We were graciously given a pass by local Customs authorities in advance in regard to the statutory importation tax in Canada and departure requirements when overwintering. Canadian Customs officials have wide discretion. We also scheduled a departure from Canada and into France (St. Pierre) so as to re-new the one-year limitation period for Canada on re-entry. As it turned out, Customs would have granted us more than a year to clear out had we needed it. We were apparently deemed to be trustworthy guests.

The trip required a broader set of seamanship skills than our Club’s typical two-week cruises. These skills applied mostly to mechanical issues. One boat’s windlass fell through the deck and had to be re-bolted. Another boat’s windlass had electrical corrosion issues. An AIS transmit function required electrical work to get functioning.

The AIS transmit is an important safety capability when traveling at night and/or in the fog and especially in a group of boats. It is also handy when port authorities are trying to locate and manage your approach in no visibility conditions such as what we had going toward Port aux Basques. With lots of other traffic, there is not a lot of time for the traffic control officers to be plotting your exact position by digesting lengthy lat/long numbers given verbally over the radio.

Three engines had oil changes, which, in turn, unveiled a potentially serious issue relating to the exhaust system and decomposing air filter in one of our boats. A toilet pump in one of our boats required a call for tech support and an on the spot rebuild. In Burgeo, a boat’s anchor got stuck on a submerged pipe. To jimmy it free, a secondary trip line was secured and then winched from another boat’s primary. One boat developed engine starting issues relating to fuel intake. This was addressed eventually at Baddeck Marine as was another boat’s complete repower. There was also a transmission issue that was addressed on the fly.

Baddeck Marine is a wonderful place to winter over if you do the decommissioning work yourself. The yard forgot to winterize Avocet’s fresh water system. All plumbing fixtures, hoses and filters were replaced at the yard’s expense and without discussion. They are honest, friendly and hard working folks. Every yard makes mistakes. Not every yard covers the costs of those mistakes. Their rates were extremely reasonable. The town of Baddeck is on the Cabot Trail and is therefore a great place to spend the time necessary when hauling or launching.

The greatest perceived challenges turned out to be largely overblown. Anchoring was not a problem though heavy ground tackle was necessary. One boat upgraded their gear for 2025. Another boat passed on a few anchorages. Rafting up, splitting up, and/or tying stern to shore resolved matters in the few places that were tight. In Pink Bottom, three boats rafted up with a stern line and the other two boats moved on to alternate anchorages. More boats could have easily joined this trip.

Katabatic winds and fouled anchor rodes, referenced by Paul Trammell in his book, Sailing to Newfoundland: A Solo Exploration of the South Coast Fjords (2023), were never a problem—however Mr. Trammell, a newcomer to sailing, deserves all the credit for undertaking such a remote trip solo. Brave man. And without a windlass! He used an InReach device for tracking when he hiked.

Our group did have to hold position an extra night at anchor in Yankee Cove, Nova Scotia, in 2024 as we were in an extended small gale. In Francois, Newfoundland we tied to a dock for the night in winds which a local told me were gusting 60 to 65 knots. The wind was greater than I have previously experienced. This local fellow correctly advised before the wind hit that it would be pushed from the North to the Northwest by the cliffs—and he was correct.

Along the fjord coastline and in front of all the cliffs, this was a dangerous lee shore very close alongside and on our rhumb line heading east. On the most egregious day, only Truant (with my son aboard) took the conservative action and gained significant sea room. It would have been difficult to impossible to sail out of trouble had there been engine failure. Anchoring was not an option as water depth close to shore was too deep. This was an instance where sailing in a group actually added a measure of hope if not real safety since we had Going Merry and her 60-horsepower engine in close proximity for a tow.

There were similarities between the Nova Scotia and Newfoundland trips. Both areas are thinly populated and are stunning in physical beauty. Both summers had extraordinarily good weather: sun, little fog and almost no rain. There was so little rain in 2025 that Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, was under a no-campfire ban. At Liscombe Lodge in Nova Scotia folks were not permitted on the hiking trails. Warm air (cool nights) and warm water (in places). Bugs were not as bad as predicted. Provisioning was a snap. Canadians freely drove us around or lent their cars and trucks.

Differences between our Nova Scotia and Newfoundland trips were not immediately apparent in advance. We sailed Nova Scotia over 70% of the time. This sailing to motoring ratio was reversed in Newfoundland because of short, steep and confused swell in the Cabot Strait and along the southern coast. The Labrador Current, the Gulf Stream Current, the Atlantic Ocean Current and enormous fetch coming up against the cliffy fjord sections of Newfoundland created convergence, blocking, gap and funneling effects. Truly a bad combo. Leaving mid-August for Nova Scotia from Maine proved to be correct for better wind and less fog. Sailing west to east along the southern coast of Newfoundland (from Port aux Basques and Squid Hole to the Lampidoes Passage) was critical. Waves, wind and current were all against us if going the other way.

Entering and exiting Dingwall, Nova Scotia, was uneventful at high tide for Avocet. She draws 8 feet. Exiting Ingonish, Nova Scotia, was not so good. A narrow channel blocked by a lobster buoy in the middle offered a 50-50 choice—she bumped the bottom but got kudos for taking one for the team following astern. Another advantage to sailing in a group.

In two of the Newfoundland fjords (Hare Bay and Facheux Bay), fish farms combined with unrelated, very long, singular, and haphazardly placed floating lines made navigation sufficiently difficult to require assistance from the boats tending these farms. At night or in fog, these areas would be arguably non-navigable. Our group relayed this information to those behind. We closed quarters and filed through in a single row.

Our group of four boats sailed as a group in Nova Scotia in 2024. Our group of five boats in 2025 sailed as a group in Newfoundland. On the return from St. Pierre, France (8 nautical miles southwest of Newfoundland), decisions had to be made sailing against prevailing southwesterly winds and the group split. One group headed to Sydney two days ahead of schedule to catch favorable conditions on that overnight passage. One boat in the other group had a schedule to meet in Sydney; and, joined by another boat, departed St. Pierre on schedule but two days after the first group. This second group subsequently departed Sydney three days after the first group. One boat hauled for the winter in Baddeck. Another boat chose an accelerated route and schedule home. In Halifax, where three boats were joined, captains read the weather differently, as they did in St. Pierre, and made departure decisions accordingly.

It is essential in sailing passages that weather windows are paramount and that each captain makes his or her own departure choices. Crew meetings in both St. Pierre and Halifax were structured to ensure that this protocol was followed. This is not what happens in organized ocean races where a race committee makes the starting gun decision for the fleet. Although it is true that our group saw different things in terms of the forecasting, it is equally true to note that this was essentially a near coastal return where safe harbors are relatively close at hand. For this reason, a weather router, like Chris Parker, was not used though he did speak for us in a 2023 seminar on the trip.

For the Blue Water Sailing Club’s “CCC” (the Caribbean Challenge Cruise 2026-2027), the stakes are higher sailing Newport to Bermuda in November. Using Chris Parker will be helpful to everyone regardless of experience levels.

Although our captains could have called in their own weather router, they relied on their own resources, heard from all other captains and learned from the experience. Weather models do not always agree with each other. Without hands-on experience doing the weather routing part and sailing a few overnight passages, one has a disadvantage relying solely on another person’s opinions and advice.

What did I learn as trip leader? It is more fun to sail in a group.

If I were to do the trip again with the same northerly winds some of us enjoyed sailing south from St. Pierre, I would sail straight to Louisbourg and skip Sydney. Sailing home in prevailing southwesterly winds requires one to be opportunistic whenever there is a northerly component. Chris Parker, prior to this trip, put it starkly. It is easier to sail from Newfoundland to Bermuda than it is to sail Newfoundland to New England.

Louisbourg gets you farther south and is more direct than going through the Bras d’Or Lakes and St. Peter’s Canal. Sydney has about an 8-mile slog up the harbor which is long, out of the way; and it comes after an overnight passage. Baddeck is not a port of entry. Sailing to Louisbourg does mean that your crew skips the Bras d’Or Lakes, but our group of boats sailed the lakes in 2024 going to Newfoundland. The lakes are a thing of beauty—not to be missed. As awesome in their solitary splendor as the fjords in Newfoundland.

On the return along the Eastern Shore of Nova Scotia, Avocet adopted several strategies. Sail early before the southwesterlies pick up, go short and stop early, and make more stops. Sail the rivers and inland bays on a beam reach like Country Harbor, Tor Bay (Webber Cove) and the beautiful and navigationally entertaining inner passages like Dover Island Passage. No rush.

The key to my kind of sailing is to find a way to do it all in cool, new places with the right mix of gunkholing, offshore passages and local exploration and to do it slowly, often with significant breaks in the action, with the right crew, friends and family. This trip has now introduced me to club cruising and it has elevated the experience. Those who join are like-minded folks who are excited about going. Hopefully, they have chosen the parts of the trip they will like. It is more rewarding to share it than it is to go solo.

About the Author: John Slingerland sails out of Boothbay Harbor, Maine on his Oyster 41, Avocet. A graduate of Middlebury College and a retired lawyer, he is presently Commodore of the Blue Water Sailing Club. John has recently completed a four-year circumnavigation of the North Atlantic Ocean and Western Mediterranean Sea. He has since led Blue Water Sailing Club members to Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. Click here for information on joining the Blue Water Sailing Club or participating in its upcoming sailing adventure to the Caribbean. The Caribbean Challenge Cruise leaves Newport, Rhode Island, in November 2026 and returns from Grenada, via Sint Maarten and Bermuda, in April 2027. Review the short form itinerary and register for the trip here.

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I called my brother Dan, who is my go-to guy for half-baked, far-flung sailing ideas. “The time is now,” I said, using an ominous voice. “Time for us to head north for some serious sailing adventure.”

No, I was not talking about the San Juan Islands, that delightful archipelago in the far northwest corner of the contiguous United States. I wanted to cross the border, where the magic continues with Canada’s Gulf Islands.

Like a baby whale tucked safely up against its mother’s belly, the 200 or so Gulf Islands are clustered around the southeast corner of Vancouver Island at the western terminus of the world’s longest international border. They benefit from the rain-shadow effect of the mountains there, with a mild, sunny climate and limited rain and snow. It’s a perfect place for two guys who spend their ­summers wilting in the heat of Florida and California.

I reminded myself, as I searched for a charter company, to ask questions and do actual research about boat maintenance and more before sending the check. This credo led me to the good people at NW Explorations, who had excellent customer reviews and a gently used Bavaria 35 available for our preferred dates in September. The ­company also scores big on ­convenience: It’s all of 10 minutes from Victoria International Airport.

One thing I kept reading on ­social media is that recreational boats need to be wary of the many ferries and floatplanes that use these ­waters. With shock, I watched a 2023 ­video of a floatplane colliding with a ­powerboat in Vancouver Harbour. And ferries are always going faster than they look. So I paid close attention on arrival day at Port Sidney Marina as I learned all about the Bavaria Immaterial Girl. 

A company rep helped us review safety gear, electronics and engine operation. She produced maintenance checklists. This was comforting compared with previous charters I’ve been on, where the company neglected to empty the holding tank or make sure all the battery cables were tight. 

Another rep then demonstrated the finer points of operation, navigating and anchoring. “The few problems we’ve had,” he said, “were customers who hit a rock and said it was unmarked. There are no unmarked rocks in this area. They’re all on the chart.”

Dan arrived from the airport a little before dusk. After loading up on food and drinks, we reviewed tides and weather, and we set the alarm for dawn. We would try to catch a break with the wind early in the week, get as far north as possible, and then pick our way south through the islands. For wind and weather forecasts, we had the internet and real-time updates. 

We motored out of the marina the next morning and were ­treated to a sublime display of rocky islands and mountains backlit by a golden sky. The florid writing of Muriel “Capi” Blanchet came to mind. She sailed these waters on a small motor launch with her five children almost 100 years ago, using the experience as ­inspiration for her Canadian classic, The Curve of Time.

I’ve spent a lot of time on boats, mostly on the US East Coast and in the Bahamas. I can tell you now that the only thing that those locations have in common with these waters is salt, storms and tides. In our warm waters, you’ll see birds and the occasional ­manatee, but up here, you’re constantly goose-necking to see pelagic life, to take it all in. I’m embarrassed to say that in all my sailing, I’d never seen a whale and was quietly hoping that a pod would make an appearance. And the soundings can go from 300 feet to less than 10 in a New York minute. 

The wind was foul but the mood was fine as we picked our way through the many isles and tidal streams. For navigation, we had paper charts and a chart plotter. The Navionics app on my phone proved the most useful; it instantly plotted our way through minefields of rocks and narrow passes. Still, I frequently cross-checked our position on all three redundant systems.

Archipelago sailing is great. You sail as long as you like and then pull over wherever you are for the night. Weary of the strong northwesterlies, we gingerly entered Princess Cove on Wallace Island, dropped a single anchor, and called it a day. At sunset, we were treated to a full harvest moon rising above the pines with a million stars above. 

The next morning, we listened to Environment Canada’s marine forecast on VHF radio Channel 21 and got underway beneath a beautiful sky on a falling tide, backtracking oh-so-slowly, with a sharp eye on the depth sounder as we reentered Trincomali Channel, bound for Gabriola Island. We raised the mainsail with the wind still forward of the beam.

Seas were smooth, and we maintained 5 knots with motor assist. Later, we passed a tug with a log boom—a reminder that we shared these waters with slow-moving working vessels. John Muir passed near here in 1879 on his way to Alaska and was astonished by what he saw. “Never before this had I been ­embosomed in scenery so hopelessly ­beyond ­description,” he wrote.

Good time is made catching the rising tide, and by afternoon, we had pulled into Degnen Bay on Gabriola, where we were disheartened to see boats chockablock on moorings. Dan took the helm while I scanned around. Canadian kindness is real: With a big smile and without being asked, a man offered his mooring to us for the night, then ran his dinghy out to show us where and took our bow line through the swivel eye. He refused to take any money. Then he got his car and offered us a ride to town. Wow, what a great place.

In Folklife Village, we picked up a few items for the larder and then caught “Gertie,” the public bus service. It makes continuous loops around the island and requires only a wave to the driver for a ride. And on this island, like all the others we visited, there were constant reminders that First Nations people had been there long before the Europeans arrived.

On day three, we threaded our way into Telegraph Harbour on Thetis Island, where two double-ended ferries regularly visit. They’re designed to get in and out of a terminal quickly; when they back out, they spin around, and it’s difficult to tell where they’re bound. I can only compare watching this to how a matador must feel when a bull stares him down. Olé and get out of the way.

The spring ebb compelled us to run at idle speed into Telegraph Harbour, then to Thetis Island Marina, where we took a just-deep-enough slip. Off we went to stretch our legs, and we came to one of the many “drying passes” in these islands. Known as “The Cut,” it serves as a risky shortcut between Thetis and Penelakut islands. We watched a small sailboat run aground trying to get through, and decided to cruise the long way when it was time for us to leave. Back at the marina’s pub, we scarfed down big bowls of clam chowder and enjoyed the warmth of a wood-burning stove, all with a great view of the boat traffic.

An incendiary sunset lit up the sky and harbor that night with radiant bands of yellow, orange and red, all burning away at the stratified clouds like a prairie wildfire. A wedge of frantic geese flew over the docks, and an owl awakened nearby, hooting its warning. It was one of those forever moments that’s all too short; within a minute, a long gray line advanced downward, pushing the colors beneath the horizon until nothing remained but a bloody glow between distant mountains. This is why I sail: It puts ordinary people like me in a position to witness the extraordinary.

Underway the next morning, we turned southeast and realized that the wind had swung to the south. Oh well, at least the skies were blue and the tide was going our way. The green mountains rose sharply, soon to be covered with snow. 

The Bavaria’s Volvo hummed contentedly. We found it to be a solid cruising yacht, albeit plastered everywhere with German imperatives such as: abwindstarke 6 sind alle kabinen-fenster zu schlieBen. That is:“In wind force 6, all cabin windows are to be closed.” Who says high school language classes don’t come in handy later in life? 

We took a sharp right at Southey Point and crossed tracks with a bulk carrier. Quickly, we steered to the side to let it pass, but a distant sailboat remained in its path. The five stentorian blasts of the ship had its crew scurrying aside. 

The small anchorage at Retreat Cove was nearby, but we carried on for the long western approach to Montague Harbour and the dock at Marine Provincial Park. From there, it was off to town to catch the bus to the famous Hummingbird Pub. Sadly, it had just closed for the season. In fact, most of the village had called it quits for the year. Back in the boat’s cockpit, as the harvest moon rose over the many anchor lights, Dan and I reminisced of days gone by in Ohio. We heard the plaintive cry of a loon. Could there be a better end to any day?

The sun rose and, despite the 44-degree temperature, it was another winner of a day with nary a cloud in the sky nor a soul moving in the anchorage. After dancing with several leviathan ferries and making the pass west of Prevost Island, we entered a massive fog bank. Dan was at the helm and I was at the bow, bleating the foghorn. Of the frequent fogs here, Blanchett wrote: “It would roll down the open channels in great round masses—­hesitate for an island, and then roll over it and on. It would fill up all the bays—searching and exploring.”

We made the turn into Bedwell Harbour and grabbed one of the many moorings at Beaumont Marine Park as the fog receded just above the tip of our mast. A hike up Mount Norman proved a lot more exercise than we’d anticipated; it was surprising that after two hours in the woods, we saw not a single critter. 

With the sun well across the yardarm, it was time for sundowners and a good meal. We zipped across the harbor to Poets Cove Resort & Spa, which was named, we were told, for the many marriage proposals that happened there. Dinner at the bar was awesome, enhanced by a spirited conversation with some patrons and the barkeeper about what makes Canadian football better than American. (Three downs instead of four? Are they kidding?)

Really, I’m not making this up: The sun rose again to a cool, clear morning without a breath of wind. Boats around us were frozen in place, clearly reflected in the water.

A seal snorted nearby, no doubt looking for a fish breakfast. Ours would be avocado toast with eggs and java. We let loose the mooring and were bound for Lyall Harbour on Saturna Island. We crept through the pass between Pender Island and Blunden Islet: very narrow, very nerve-wracking. Our Lady of Blessed Navionics got us through, with 20 feet to spare.

Later, Dan called down from the wheel: “Hey, bro, this ­powerboat is gonna hit us. What should I do?” 

I quickly explained the basic rules of the road, which in a crossing situation can be summed up as: When he’s right, you’re wrong. The fishing boat was crossing our path from the left side. “So we’re the stand-on ­vessel?” Dan asked. “Precisely,” I ­answered. “But let’s be ready to circle around his stern if he doesn’t know this too.”

We rounded the tip of Saturna and squeezed ­into the public wharf at Lyall Harbour. The cruising guide talked of a bike-rental shop nearby, but it had recently gone out of business. No car rentals either. We had our feet, but these islands are big; next time, we’ll bring bikes.

A hike eastward for a few clicks brought us to Saturna General Store & Freight, where we made our last grocery purchases of the cruise. My cash was getting low. Banks that provide foreign exchange are few and far between in the Gulf Islands, but major credit cards are accepted everywhere. And most places accepted our US cash.

Back at the wharf, we bought tasty bread from Vibrational Café and learned that it was closing for the season in a few days. As the moon peeked out from the distant trees, we enjoyed dinner from the deck of Saturna Lighthouse Pub and watched the last floatplane and ferry head off into the gloaming.

We were underway again on another no-wind morning and spotted basking seals on Saturna Beach, then motored past the dreadfully named Murder Point and wiggled through the many tidal rips along the international border south of Moresby Island. At Portland Island, we made a final ride to the beach for a hike, then called it a week.

It was time to refuel and then deposit Immaterial Girl back in its slip, where it would be cleaned and turned over to another party. Dan and I tied up and fist-bumped, happy for the great week together and all the special places we had visited. 

And then we walked away from one of the best sailing grounds on the continent.

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As I pulled on the 11-foot carbon oars under a hot July sun, I reflected on my seeming inability to cross Washington state’s Rosario Strait in a normal fashion. Not two months prior, I had dashed across the 5 nautical miles of open water amid a small-craft advisory, a day when 20-knot gusts and a wind-against-tide sea state had threatened to overhaul Lazydog’s gunwales. Yet here I was, with growing blisters and diminishing daylight, trying my best to crab my way toward Matia Island against the flood tide and a precarious possibility of ending up in the Strait of Georgia.

The launch ramp in Fairhaven, Washington, had been seven hours ago, serving as my starting point for a four-day weekend and a mini cruise in the San Juan Islands. My loosely formed plan was to carve a counterclockwise loop around Lummi Island from Thursday to Sunday, taking advantage of the Cascadia marine-trail campsites. The only monkey wrench would be the wind, fickle as ever during the summer drought, and not forecast at more than 6 knots. 

On day one, I aimed to make the 15-nautical-mile passage to Matia Island. Lazydog’s varnished jib club obediently shepherded the beige sail across the foredeck as I played the puffs of wind toward Hale Passage, a milewide hurdle that had to be crossed. As any Bellingham-based sailor will tell you, whatever the wind is in the bay when you set off, Hale Passage and Rosario Strait are guaranteed to have entirely different conditions. Unfortunately for me, this meant that the wind had died. It was time to get rowing. 

I assembled the two-part carbon oars, which I MacGyvered to give me a fighting chance of rowing Lazydog’s 1,500-pound displacement, and began plodding north up Hale Passage. The backward view did not disappoint, as Mount Baker and the Sisters range pierced into the blue sky above Bellingham’s patchworked timberland hills.

After about an hour, the wind line more wholly embraced us. Up went the sails, with the Marconi-rigged main sheeted tight to the aft quarter. This felt great, because rowing a sailboat is a lot like hiking a trail with your mountain bike. It’s neat to be outdoors, but it isn’t the reason you left the house. I pressed to windward, lounging on the leeward seat to give Lazydog the heel it appreciates in light winds. 

With the flood current carrying us north toward Migley Point, it became obvious that there was not a whisper of a wind in Rosario Strait. It was already 17:00, with sunset in four hours. I could find a nook along the private beaches of Lummi’s eastern shore to anchor for the night, but I would be unable to leave the boat. Alternatively, I could stick to my original plan and row the 5 miles of open water to Matia Island’s eastern cove. I estimated the crossing at three hours, a duration I had not previously attempted. Nevertheless, I decided to bet on the resilience of my 25-year-old back.

Almost immediately, it became clear that the flooding tide would be an issue. It was running at a meager single knot, yet my pace on the oars was only 2.5 knots, and my course over ground was swinging dangerously toward a long night of dodging commercial traffic in the Strait of Georgia. I turned the bow farther south, toward the peak of Mount Constitution on Orcas Island. By keeping the peak on the bow, I arrested my descent down the shipping lane. 

For the following two hours, I snacked incessantly to keep my energy up, and I lovingly cultivated the blister farm growing on my palms. I was just about exhausted, but I could see the diminutive cove where I planned to stay the night. The last mile took an hour. As the sun dipped past the Douglas fir trees at the head of the cove, I dropped my stern anchor into 20 feet of refreshingly cold water and stepped ashore to place my second anchor high in the sand.

Up went the sails, with the main sheeted tight to the aft quarter. This felt great, because rowing a sailboat is a lot like hiking a trail with your mountain bike. It’s neat to be outdoors, but it isn’t the reason you left the house. 

I sat on the floorboards and stretched out my ravaged hands. Dinner was next on the docket. I gorged on canned soup and homemade focaccia like it was my last supper. Then I pulled Lazydog back to shore and set off down the half-mile path to catch the final sunset rays from Rolfe Cove on Matia’s western side. Sprawled on a picnic-table bench, I watched the sky turn from pink to deep blue. 

When I pulled Lazydog out into deeper water to weather the night’s tidal swings, the scattered bioluminescence twinkled all around. It was the height of their season, and in the tranquil water, they dwarfed the stars in number and brilliance. Peering over the gunwale, I watched 6-inch-long fish carve shimmering swaths through the dancing spectacle. Finally, I gave in to exhaustion and nestled my sleeping pad and bag between the centerboard trunk and the hull planks for the night. 

The boisterous dawn chorus of robins and chickadees roused me at 5 a.m., but I rolled over and returned to my slumber for two more hours. I hadn’t rigged my boom tarp the night before and was paying for my negligence with a thick layer of dew covering everything. The July sun was my ally, and after an easy breakfast of dehydrated fruit and granola, I pulled Lazydog back to the beach and went for a walk while everything dried out. 

Back on the boat a short time later, I waded waist-deep into the clear water to wash away the previous day’s sweat and sunscreen. Drying out in the cockpit, I trained my binoculars out of the cove to see a steady 8 to 10 knots of northwesterly wind rolling small wavelets down Rosario Strait. Because I would have committed unspeakable acts for such conditions the day prior, I resolved not to waste the opportunity and was soon rounding the jumbled rocks of Matia’s southeastern point toward Sucia Island. 

White clouds dotted the blue sky overhead as personal watercraft filled in around us. Lazydog and I were battling a slight ebb current, but with such lovely wind, the current proved a nonfactor near the mouth of Fossil Bay. It’s a popular place, but it had been a number of years since I had last walked the trails here, so I joined the inevitable crowds. By the time I had set my anchors and dismounted onto the beach, several folks were waiting to chat with me about Lazydog. Evidently, a varnished 16-foot wooden boat roll-tacking into Fossil Bay was not a daily occurrence. One white-haired gentleman shared his own experiences owning a Doughdish, the fiberglass version of the original Herreshoff 12½ with a full keel. He said that watching me roll through tacks up the bay reminded him that his Doughdish had been the finest boat to sail he’d ever owned.

After returning from my walk, I readjusted Lazydog closer to the beach so that the incoming tide would not force me to swim out to it in deep water later in the day. With the sun high overhead, I spent the rest of the afternoon reading in a hammock strung up on a bluff overlooking Orcas and Waldron islands across the water to the south and west. Some adventurous rowers I had crossed paths with the day prior in Hale Passage had pulled up onto the beach shortly after my own arrival, and as evening fell, I dined with them at their campsite, swapping stories of past trips and comparing blisters. They highly recommended a campsite on the southeastern shore of Lummi Island, but tomorrow’s forecast was an abysmal “wind variable 5 knots or less.” I turned in for the night, unsure of what my next port of call would be. 

Once again, the bioluminescence danced around Lazydog, and the Big Dipper and Cassiopeia swung around Polaris overhead. In the trees not 10 feet from where my anchor was set on the beach, a great horned owl whistled for its mate, who came swooping over. I overheard a young parent pointing out the “really cool bird” to a child, who protested, “That’s not a bird, that’s an owl.” My eyes were drooping, but the parent must have been even more exhausted than I was, because the child’s declaration of fact went unchallenged. 

Morning broke with an unexpected 10 to 15 knots of wind sweeping over the grassy portage from the northwest and twisting through the jammed mooring buoys in Fossil Bay. Without much idea of how long it would last, I decided to point my bow southwest to see how far it would take me. If conditions softened quickly, Clark Island Marine State Park was an option in Rosario Strait, but if it held on into the afternoon, I had a shot of making the Lummi Cove site that the other rowers had recommended. Also on my mind was the need to return to work in two days’ time—and the fear of a desperate Sunday-night row if I didn’t knock off some miles today. 

I horsed down enough breakfast to last me deep into the ­afternoon and was soon pulling up my ­anchors and hoisting the beige sails. Flicking the jib club across the foredeck, I ran wing-on-wing downwind through the boats ­swinging on their moorage balls. Once clear of the bay, I raised the white spinnaker with its varnished 7-foot pole. Lazydog began romping downwind with the following seas at a jovial rate of 5 to 6 knots. 

By the time I had set my anchors and ­dismounted onto the beach, several folks were waiting to chat with me. Evidently, a varnished 16‑foot wooden boat roll‑tacking into Fossil Bay was not a daily occurrence.

This was champagne sailing, although it required diligent work on the helm and leeward spinnaker sheet to dance through the waves without jibing to leeward or broaching to windward. In less than an hour, I was bearing down on Clark and Barnes islands. To keep life interesting, and mostly because I hadn’t done it before, I decided to shoot the skinny gap between them and get a good look at the beachside campground on Clark Island. The flood tide and wind swept me through the gap, and the white sandy beach—a rarity in the San Juans—was admittedly inviting, however with the wind still up, I harbored greater ­ambitions. I pressed onward. 

Farther south down Rosario Strait, the wind began to ease. I took the opportunity to eat lunch as I passed the gently sloping beaches along private Sinclair Island. Near the south end of Lummi Island, I cruised by Viti Rocks, marked with a tall white-and-black pylon and dotted with hundreds of double-crested cormorants who dived for fish in the shallows around them. 

When Lazydog finally stuck its bow around Lummi’s southern terminus back into Bellingham Bay, it was like I had entered a different world, one of placid waters and a complete lack of breeze. I persisted east toward Eliza Island with the spinnaker until I had to admit that not only was it making no active contribution to my boatspeed, but I was now drifting backward as well, away from my destination. 

Begrudgingly, I doused all sails, reshipped the oars, and began plodding the mile and a half toward the ­campsite. I had an abundance of time on my side to examine the nooks and crannies of the steeply forested shoreline. The journey was interrupted only twice—first when an aluminum fishing runabout came by to inquire if I needed assistance, and second when a stitch-and-glue wooden rowboat came past in the opposite direction with a couple and their dog. They remarked about Lazydog’s beauty, for which I thanked them and joked that it made for a pretty atrocious rowboat compared with their craft. 

Finally, I spotted the pocket beach tucked up at the head of a 50-foot-wide cove. I rowed past the complaining pigeon guillemots nesting in the rocky cliffs at the entrance and concluded my longest passage of the trip, 17 nautical miles from the arcing embrace of Sucia that morning. 

The beach here was rocky, and I had to set my stern anchor deeper than usual to ensure that it set well down in the mud. My shore anchor was refusing to set nicely up on the beach, so I removed the 2.5-pound Danforth and 5 feet of chain to instead tie the rode around a massive piece of driftwood that I figured weighed more than Lazydog. The rowing duo I had passed earlier soon joined me in the cove. It was their first overnight outing in a newly acquired kit boat, with plans to spend the long weekend hiking Cypress Island. Not too much later, the rowers from Sucia also arrived, and the cove gained the atmosphere of an impromptu wooden-boat festival. 

With the afternoon sun blazing overhead and still no wind to be found, I went for a swim in the cove, relishing the 50-degree water. I could see clear to the rock-and-mud bottom, and I swam on the surface, following my anchor rode until I was looking 20 feet down at the 4-pound Danforth anchor set firmly below. The anchor had yet to fail me on overnights, but I figured that a sailor should always check their holding, given the opportunity. 

Back at the beach, I grabbed my hammock and book to go read up on the bluffs, letting the drying of my wet clothes cool me as I swung between the deep green trees. Later in the evening, the bioluminescence returned around Lazydog’s red waterline, and the cloudless night allowed the constellations to shine brilliantly for a fitting final night of the trip. 

I awoke to the sun piercing the cove and the leaves on the bluff-side madrona trees shimmering with the wind. A local morning breeze was once again fighting its crusade against the official forecast, as cat’s-paws of 5 to 10 knots dappled down Hale Passage from the north.

Knowing that it couldn’t last long, I was raising Lazydog’s sails within an hour and shouting my goodbyes to some of the rowers who watched me depart from the cliffs. I put the far-off industrial docks of Fairhaven right on the bow for a tight reach course across the bay. After an hour of productive progress yet halfway from anywhere, the sails finally slackened with the dying breeze. It was still only midmorning, so I lounged on the aft deck, propped up by some flotation cushions.

Sure enough, after around an hour of waiting, a timid ­southerly began to press northward toward downtown Bellingham. Its shifty 3 to 5 knots proved sufficient to propel me the last few miles ­toward home. Around noon, I doused Lazydog’s sails to coast the final few feet into Fairhaven’s public dock, pleased to have completed the 44-nautical-mile cruise without having to reinvigorate the blisters acquired on day one. 

As I doused Lazydog with the launch ramp’s freshwater hose, four days’ worth of salt and sand washed back toward the bay. I drove home knowing that it would all be returning to the ­varnished coaming and floorboards at least once more before the summer was out.  

Sean Grealish, a master’s student in environmental science at Western Washington University, studies estuary restoration in Bellingham. He’s a seasoned racer with two Transpacs and an R2AK finish, and he enjoys cruising the San Juans on his family’s Lazydog.

The post Row Hard, Sail Harder appeared first on Cruising World.

I abandoned keelboats in the 1990s, no longer willing to make the necessary sacrifices. I was tired of slip fees. Tired of haulouts and winter storage. Tired of maintenance. The truth is, I was too lazy for all that, and always had been. 

My next boat, FOGG, was an unballasted cruising dinghy hardly bigger than a canoe. I built it with one simple idea in mind: to be able to answer the wind’s call at a moment’s notice. I wanted to hoist the sails and set off for the margins of the map whenever I felt like it, trading long, offshore passages for quiet meanderings along the watery edges of the world. 

For my next trip, I planned to take FOGG to the Thirty Thousand Islands, a sprawling Neverland of winding channels, rocky islands and white-pine forests that runs for 120 miles along the eastern shoreline of Lake Huron’s Georgian Bay. For crew, I recruited my friend Jay Williams. An experienced windsurfer but novice sailor, Jay was the only person I knew who’d see a week aboard an open boat as a step upin comfort. 

After a 10-hour drive from Wisconsin, we launched the boat in the village of Killarney, Ontario. Jay assembled his gear and loaded the boat as I parked the car and trailer a few blocks away in the back lot at the Church of St. Bonaventure.

Bonaventure. “Good luck.” I hoped we wouldn’t need it.

One advantage of launching at Killarney was the availability of good campsites nearby. With no need to go far on our first night, we treated ourselves to a fried fish dinner at the Herbert Fisheries dockside restaurant before setting off down the narrow Killarney Channel under auxiliary power—oars—in a breezeless calm. Engineless cruising calls for a boat that rows as well as it sails, and FOGG fits the bill perfectly.

A mile out of town, we rowed into Thebo Cove and set up camp on a sweeping granite slab where a low rock ledge formed a convenient dock. We spent a quiet evening under clear skies, the occasional wavering cry of a loon breaking the deep silence, the Milky Way a bright scattering of dust in the night sky. 

Then next morning, we loaded our gear, rowed past Killarney East Lighthouse into the open water of Georgian Bay, and hoisted the sail. Under blue skies and a moderate breeze, I put Jay at the tiller to get a feel for the boat. He proved to be a quick study. 

FOGG’s 85-square-foot boomless standing lugsail involves only a sheet and downhaul, trading sail-shaping controls for simplicity. I’ve come to think of it as a rig that disallows type-A behavior, a perfect match for my own lack of ambition. That said, the rig’s popularity with British and French smugglers in the 17th and 18th centuries suggests a certain level of performance—enough to outrun a revenue cutter, at least. I was more interested in how easy it was to reef the sail, or to strike the rig entirely when necessary, prime virtues for a small-boat cruising rig.

It was still early morning as Jay steered east on a broad reach, one hand on the tiller and the sheet tied off to an oarlock with a slipped half hitch. Perfect sailing. We reached the Fox Islands in a couple of hours, a 6- or 7-mile crossing. With the bow tied to an anchor buried in the ­cobblestones of West Fox Island’s broad beach, and a smaller anchor off the stern, we waded ashore in knee-deep water. We spent an hour traversing the broad granite summit while the breeze shuffled through the tall white pines overhead and sunlight glittered on the wavetops offshore.

With the wind holding steady from the southwest, I suggested we head for Hawk Island next. It would be a 2-mile hop to a tall granite dome fringed with cliffs and white pines. Jay was proving hard to dislodge from his position at the helm; he was already talking about building a boat for his own sail-and-oar adventures. 

I settled in on the ­forward thwart, arranging a couple of cushions behind me for ­optimal lounging, and contented myself with an ­occasional suggestion about sail trim. FOGG surged forward smoothly through the water, its sleek hull moving easily under full sail.

We landed on Hawk Island’s north side, where a rocky arm of the island provided shelter from the southwesterly breeze. The Thirty Thousand Islands region is classic Canadian Shield terrain—a vast region of the north where glaciers scraped the topsoil from the earth as they flowed southward during the last ice age, leaving behind huge expanses of exposed bedrock. 

Hawk Island was a perfect example: a slabby dome of granite rising high above the water, all pale-gray stone, clear water and dark pines. We ­circled the island on foot, scrambling over small cliffs and past deep ravines as a mob of gulls circled overhead, squawking loudly. Other than the gulls, we had it all to ourselves.

By the time we left Hawk Island, the wind had backed to the south. With no goal beyond enjoying the ­journey, we turned northwest and spent the afternoon threading a winding path through the northern edge of the Fox Islands, ghosting along past island after island in faint breezes, gliding through knee-deep sandy shallows edged by tall reeds, and slipping through rocky channels barely a boatlength wide. The centerboard and rudder touched bottom now and then, dragging through the sand, but we managed to stay afloat. It was a perfect introduction to boathandling for Jay. 

We finally dropped the sail to row through a maze of unnamed rocks toward the north side of Solomons Island, where a broad slab of granite at the water’s edge provided the perfect campsite.

The next morning, I was up before dawn. FOGG hung from the painter just offshore, afloat on a perfect mirror of the world. The water lay as dark and smooth and unruffled as a windowpane, each rock and tree and island reflected in unwavering detail. It was too much to resist. 

Leaving Jay asleep in his tent, I shoved off and spent an hour weaving my way through the outlying islands under oars, sneaking through passages barely wider than the boat’s narrow hull. With no roads or cottages nearby, I might have been a thousand miles from anywhere. I returned to camp to find Jay ready for the next leg of the journey, whatever that would be.

Counting on the ­prevailing westerlies to continue, I suggested that we set out for the Bustard Islands, about 20 miles east. We loaded the boat, rowed out through the rocks to open water, and hoisted the sail. Knowing that the wind would likely grow stronger as the day went on, I kept a close eye on the conditions as Jay steered us eastward on a southerly breeze.

An hour after setting sail, we had left the Fox Islands behind and were making rapid progress. FOGG’s narrow hull sliced cleanly through the waves on a close reach, but the wind had been building steadily. Whitecaps ruffled the surface in all directions now. The waves were distinctly higher here, out past Hawk Island, with a 60-mile fetch and a strong wind blowing. 

Soon enough, the ­wavetops were higher than our heads, approaching 6 feet from trough to crest—a good reminder of how quickly conditions can change on the Great Lakes. Now and then, a wave crest broke over the side of the boat in a tumbling burst of spray and foam. 

“Is this OK?” Jay asked. “Should we tie in a reef?”

I had been wondering the same thing. FOGG was doing fine for now, covering ground quickly, but these were no conditions for an inexperienced helmsman. It was all too easy to imagine a capsize. I doubted that would prove fatal—I had done extensive capsize testing with FOGG and knew we’d be able to self-rescue if necessary, even in these conditions—but it would make a god-awful mess of things at the very least. And the Bustard Islands were still almost 20 miles off.

“Head us up into the wind,” I told Jay. “We’ll drop the sail and run off under oars.” 

Even triple-reefing the sail wouldn’t protect us from the waves, which is why “strike the rig and row” is a time-honored storm tactic for small-boat sailing. Jay turned us directly into the waves, and FOGG coasted to a stop.

Dropping the sail took ­only a second or two—the weight of the yard brought it down instantly after I ­uncleated the halyard. Next, I pulled out the mast and laid it in the boat—a simple operation with an unstayed mast only 13 feet long. 

Without the sailing rig, FOGG lurched and bobbed in the waves, rolling wildly as the hull was pushed broadside to the swells. I was reminded of a passage from Stephen Crane’s 1897 short story “The Open Boat”: “A seat in this boat was not unlike a seat upon a jumpy horse, and a horse is not muchsmaller.” It was a perfect description of our own situation.

I raised the centerboard and pulled out the oars while Jay steered us toward shore with the tiller. Once we turned off the wind, the boat’s motion steadied down to a mild rolling. Wave after wave passed beneath us, pushing FOGG forward in a surging rush of effortless motion that made my attempts at rowing almost irrelevant. We were just over a mile offshore by my reckoning—30 minutes of downwind rowing, maybe. 

The rocky lee shore we were aiming for would have meant disaster for a deep-draft keelboat. For us, it meant safety. FOGG’s 7-inch draft would allow us to slip through the band of rocks and shoals that guards the Georgian Bay mainland to find a protected anchorage in a quiet backwater well inshore. Crisis averted.

After a pleasant night in a perfectly sheltered cove on the southern edge of Philip Edward Island, we set off early the next day. Taking advantage of Georgian Bay’s typical morning calms, we rowed out through a tangle of rocks and shoals amid a chorus of loon calls. A heron flew overhead, wings almost brushing the treetops. Here was the small-boat Neverland we had come for—the north woods shattered into 30,000 pieces, a disassembled jigsaw puzzle scattered across the water all around us. 

This was canoe and kayak country, really, but FOGG was proving equally suited to the task, opening the door to a world we never could have reached in a bigger boat. 

A mile or two from camp, we arrived at open water just as the wind did the same. I hoisted the sail, and Jay steered southeast on a starboard tack. For this leg of the journey, we’d need to keep well offshore to avoid a long belt of shoals and rocks known as The Chickens, which runs 2 miles from Rooster Rock in the west to Hen Island in the east. The compass bearing that I estimated from a glance at the chart proved accurate enough; Jay soon had the Rooster Rock buoy in sight.

FOGG swept along ­happily on a close reach, riding easily on waves a foot or two high—an entirely different world from the previous day’s dangerous swells. After a couple of hours, we ­rounded Rooster Rock and turned due east, on a broad reach now. The day was all blue skies, sun and glittering arcs of spray—perfect conditions—while half a mile to the north, a ragged line of breaking waves and whitecaps marked the edge of The Chickens.

Ten miles farther on, passing Grondine Point (or “grumbling point,” for the continuous rumble of waves on the rocky shore), we decided to take advantage of FOGG’s capabilities by turning north. We would sail up the westernmost channel of the French River Delta through a network of cliff-sided grooves and channels that marked the passage of the glaciers of the last ice age. We’d ride the wind as far as we could, then drop the sail and take to the oars to push farther upriver. 

Indigenous peoples have used the sheltered routes through the French River Delta for thousands of years. Later, European fur traders used them too. The path we meant to follow was named the Voyageur Channel. From the chart, it looked like we should be able to sail up this passage for a few miles, turn east along the north side of Green Island, and return to the open waters of Georgian Bay via the Fort Channel a few miles farther east.

The southwest winds pushed us rapidly past long, low ridges that divided the river into an endless series of parallel channels. We were on a broad reach, almost a run, making 4 or 5 knots—too fast for comfort in the narrow, cliff-sided passages. It was time to drop the sail and take to the oars. Five or 6 miles of rowing would take us past Green Island, down the Fort Channel, and back out to open water. By the next day, after overnighting somewhere in the French River Delta, we’d be sailing again. In the meantime, there was no rush. 

This was canoe and kayak country, but FOGG was opening the door to a world we never could have reached in a bigger boat.

We spent the rest of the afternoon idling along the Voyageur Channel, trading off stints at the oars and stopping ashore to explore the side canyons, pine forests, and steep granite slabs whenever we found an easy landing place. It was late evening before we finally tethered FOGG to an island at the upper end of the Fort Channel and carried our camping gear up a low-angle slab to a narrow ledge bristling with mosses and lichens: home for the night.

It took three days to work our way back to the car and trailer at Killarney, an as-the-crow-flies distance of 25 miles. But FOGG was no crow. We pushed a few more miles upriver from our campsite the next day, paddling through cliffbound passages that were too narrow for rowing, edging into quiet backwaters lined with lily pads and tall reeds, and tying up beside steep cliffs to climb above the treetops. 

We may as well have been alone in the world—we saw no boats, no people. But we weren’t quite alone, either. A black bear shuffled past our campsite in an ­early-morning fog; a mink slipped along the rocks at the water’s edge as we rowed past; Jay found an Eastern Massasauga rattlesnake curled up in the lichen between our tents. It was the best kind of journey—not sailing, not paddling, not backpacking, but rather a hybrid that combined the best of all of them.

After a couple of days exploring inshore, we spent two days sailing back toward Killarney through wide-open ​waters, zigzagging offshore in a long series of lopsided tacks to make westward progress against the prevailing winds: past Hen Island, past The Chickens, past Grondine Point and Beaverstone Bay.

By now, Jay was an old hand at the tiller, handling FOGG with an ease born of long practice. We made our last camp on Hawk Island, carrying our tents to a high ledge just below the summit, leaving the boat tied to shore at a quiet corner of the beach far below. The setting sun made sharp silhouettes of the Fox Islands, with the rugged La Cloche Mountains forming a jagged skyline on the mainland beyond.

I sat on the summit of Hawk Island well into the night, long after daylight had faded from the sky to reveal the stars overhead, one after another. From where I sat, I could see FOGG resting quietly at anchor in the quiet water of the bay far below, the pale green hull barely visible in the light of a waning moon. Jay sat nearby with his guitar, working his way through a Jackson Browne song, in no hurry to crawl into his tent. 

In the morning, we’d have 10 miles of sailing to reach Killarney—10 miles away, and a different world entirely. I wasn’t sure if either of us was ready to return.

Tom Pamperin is a writer, teacher, ­small-boat sailor and occasional boatbuilder based in the Upper Midwest. He writes regularly about wooden-boat building and sailing. His 2014 book, Jagular Goes Everywhere: (mis)Adventures in a $300 Sailboat, received an honorable mention for the Council for Wisconsin Writers’ Blei/Derleth Nonfiction Book Award.

The post Minimalist Cruising: Georgian Bay by Dinghy appeared first on Cruising World.

Great Lakes sailors can be somewhat smug when they talk about the lack of salt, sharks, tides and hurricanes. We were no different until we sailed True North, a Beneteau Oceanis 41.1 that we had acquired new in 2018, from Rochester, New York, to Portland, Maine, via the St. Lawrence River and the Canadian Maritimes. We discovered a fascinating world beyond the Great Lakes and an adventure that made giving up those Great Lakes advantages worthwhile.

Equipped with Capt. Cheryl Barr’s Down East Circle Route, we had started planning the trip several years ago but had a pandemic delay. Finally, in late June 2023, with some apprehension about what might come, we left Rochester for an adventure that would be truly life-changing.

I am an experienced sailor with a 100-Ton US Coast Guard Master Captain’s License. I’m also a US Sailing-certified Basic Keelboat Instructor. My spouse, Sandy, has American Sailing Association Bareboat certification. We have cruised together for 15 years on Lake Ontario in the United States, and on Lake Geneva in Switzerland. Even still, this trip would be like nothing Sandy had experienced before. During planning, I often asked her whether we were really up to this. She held fast. It was largely her resolve and courage that enabled this voyage to happen.

The Down East Circle Route connects Lake Ontario to the Atlantic Ocean by way of the St. Lawrence River, leaving New York State via the Thousand Islands, passing through six Canadian provinces, and crossing the Bay of Fundy to arrive in Down East Maine. This route includes close encounters with whales, seals, puffins and porpoises, as well as some of the most spectacular scenery that maritime Canada and the Northeast United States have to offer.

To prepare for the trip, we made numerous boat improvements, such as an arch with davits, a full cockpit enclosure, solar panels, Starlink, zinc anodes (replacing the magnesium ones used in fresh water) and an inverter. Our other preparations included upgrading our boat insurance, arranging for mail and travel medical insurance, and figuring out what to pack for temperatures that would range from 30 to 80 degrees Fahrenheit.

As we departed from our home dock, we were fortunate to be escorted on the first few legs by sailing friends, an act of kindness that tempered the emotion of leaving home for an extended period. On the first day, a rare, thick fog set in along the south shore of Lake Ontario. Although unexpected, it enabled us to practice using our radar and foghorn. This was useful for the “real” fog we would encounter in Nova Scotia and Maine, where it is supposed to be.

After overnight stops in Fairhaven, Sackets Harbor, and Clayton, New York, we entered Canada by way of Brockport, Ontario, along the St. Lawrence River, and caught up with a sailing couple we had met the year prior while cruising the lake, when we all realized we’d be making the same journey. We sailed as a loose flotilla for the early part of the cruise, a strategy that was helpful to build confidence for both crews, and that provided welcome company and occasional assistance.

There are seven shipping locks along the St. Lawrence Seaway, two in the United States and five in Canada, designed to raise or lower seagoing freighters. Pleasure boats are tolerated, but long, unpredictable waits are the rule.

As we made our way down the river, we began to experience strong currents, something new for lake sailors. Heading downstream meant these currents added to our boatspeed. I learned the hard way that you need extra space to clear an obstruction from upstream when True North swiped a navigational buoy while giving way to a freighter coming up the shipping channel. Fortunately, there was no damage, other than to our pride. 

On the other hand, the current allowed us to cover record ­distances each day, until we reached Montreal. The last lock lets out downstream of Montreal, so, to visit the city, we needed to head upstream several miles, fighting 5 to 6 knots of current. With our 45 hp engine nearly full out, what would normally be 8 knots over ground was only 2. After reading that many sailors have had to skip Montreal and move on to Longueuil or other points downstream, we felt fortunate to dock in the heart of Old Montreal. We thoroughly enjoyed the culture, cuisine and atmosphere of this cosmopolitan city. We also caught up with friends we’d met several years in a row while cruising Lake Ontario.

Moving on to Quebec City added tides to our repertoire of unfamiliar phenomena. In addition to river currents, we also needed to consider tidal currents, the interplay between tidal and river currents, and depth changes. The Canadian Hydrographic Service publishes a 130-page tide and current document, but we kept it simple, timing departures a few hours before high tide. The combined river current cancels the slowing tidal current, causing slack water to occur before high tide. Then the river ­current combines with the ebbing tide to give the boat a nice push downstream. Tides are a big factor in Quebec City, where the main marina has a dedicated lock to lift and lower boats to meet the marina’s depth, which is maintained constant.

I had yet another lesson when heading out of an anchorage near Sorel-Tracy where, according to charts, tides aren’t yet a factor. We ran aground, even though we traced our breadcrumbs from when we entered the anchorage. 

We tried, to no avail, to twist True North off the shoal with the bow thruster. I eventually lowered our dinghy, Lil’ North, and towed True North astern with all the might that the dinghy’s 10 hp outboard could muster, while Sandy reversed hard with the diesel. This did the trick, and we met out in deeper water to collect our wits and move on. Many cruisers use two-way headsets (“marriage savers”) while anchoring or docking. They were invaluable here too.

Quebec City is a beautiful, European-spirited town, rich in history, culture and delicious cuisine. We lingered several days to enjoy the sights and soak in as much civilization as possible before heading into increasingly remote territory.

Moving on, we added salt water to currents and tides, ­expanding our sailing experience even further. I observed that salt added buoyancy, enabling the boat to move faster. I also ­observed the mess it makes of everything. We couldn’t stop imagining salt water flowing through the various raw-water circuits, leaving a trail of corrosive destruction. But it was a small price to pay for the experience that it afforded.

A short detour to Tadoussac, at the mouth of the Saguenay Fjord, allowed us to get up close with beluga and minke whales, as well as seals, amid a landscape reminiscent of Alaska or Norway.

We never stopped being impressed with the kindness and generosity of people we met in rural Quebec. Fishing boats were moved around to make room for us in ports. Dock neighbors, to whom we were complete strangers, offered the keys to their vehicles to facilitate our provisioning runs. We preferred to walk to stretch our legs, but the gesture was so kind that we always brought a little something back as a measure of gratitude for those who offered.

The northernmost part of our route found us slipping briefly above the 49th parallel before veering southeast to Gaspé. The river widens progressively from this point as it flows toward the Atlantic. Marinas are fewer and farther between, but there are anchorages and surprisingly welcoming fishing ports. 

Gaspé, near the mouth of the St. Lawrence, is stunning. Pictures of the region’s Percé Rock were an inspiration for this trip and became emblematic. This was also the coldest part of the trip, with nighttime temperatures dipping into the 30s in August. 

Gaspé is a peninsula that also boasts a national park, a quaint town and the luminescent green Emerald Falls. We rented a car to explore. Driving felt strange after so much sailing. When eventually sailing on from Gaspé, we got one more close-up view of the majestic Percé Rock, this time from the water.

And then, there was the Atlantic Ocean. We worked our way down the coast of increasingly remote Quebec, anchoring or squatting space in fishing ports. Again, we were delighted by how we were welcomed. Speaking French certainly helped, but Anglophone sailors we met had had similarly positive experiences.

We were impressed with the generosity of people we met. Complete strangers would offer their vehicles to facilitate our provisioning. 

We crossed the Chaleur Bay toward New Brunswick. This bay is notorious for aggressive sailing conditions, and we close-reached 80 nautical miles in 30-knot winds and 6-foot seas for most of the day. Sandy is not a fan of heeling, chop or gusts, yet she held on bravely as we plowed forward. The reward was a calm anchorage in Miramichi Bay, New Brunswick, and a beautiful sunset.

After a day there, we crossed the lower stretch of the Gulf of St. Lawrence to Prince Edward Island, the smallest Canadian province, and tied up at the Summerside Yacht Club and Marina on the western side. We did need maintenance after some pretty tough sailing, and we provisioned, washed clothes and crew, and enjoyed town life for the first time in weeks. We rented a car and took a side trip to Charlottetown, the main city on the island, and caught up with a colleague from 20 years ago who lives there.

After several days, we crossed back to Nova Scotia, a province we were eager to visit. We were welcomed by an anchorage with an unspoiled beach full of clams and crabs. It was fascinating to watch their behaviors and the small geysers caused by clams buried a few inches below the sand. 

We worked our way east along the coast, entering St. George’s Bay for another tough sail, with strong winds on the nose and choppy seas. We got into position to traverse the Canso Canal, without which we would have had to add significant distance to circumnavigate Cape Breton. After the canal, we had hoped to detour to visit Bras d’Or Lake. Unfortunately, the forecast required us to move on quickly, but we promised ourselves we’d sail back there another time.

The Canso Canal moved us from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the wide-open Atlantic Ocean. From this point, we experienced yet another new phenomenon: swells. They are much more pleasant than the short, irregular chop we experience on the Great Lakes. Nevertheless, there can also be chop, which taught us the meaning of a confused sea state. 

We worked our way down the southeast coast of Nova Scotia, stopping mostly in beautiful anchorages, usually ­encountering seals. Halifax, Nova Scotia’s principal city, is home to The Binnacle, where, like many sailors, we made our pilgrimage to buy parts and supplies. Halifax is full of interesting history, delicious restaurants and an attractive waterfront. As the nearest city to the site of the sinking of the Titanic, it played a key role in rescuing the survivors and is the burial place for many who did not survive. 

We worked our way down to Lunenburg and then Yarmouth, our departure point for crossing the Bay of Fundy and entering Maine. We left Yarmouth in pitch-dark in order to arrive in Maine in daylight. Despite the bay’s 50-foot tides, the crossing was uneventful. We had expected to find lobster traps as we approached Maine but were astounded by the sheer number of them, including in the middle of marked channels and anchorages.

Checking in with US customs was uneventful: After a quick video tour of our boat using an app, the officer cleared us. We then worked our way down the Maine coast, with a prolonged stop in Bar Harbor. We anchored in the Skillings River, a short dinghy ride from downtown at high tide, when the sandbar connecting Bar Island is submerged. Bar Harbor is touristy but maintains its charm and is, of course, the gateway to Acadia National Park and all its beauty. 

From there, we headed out into Penobscot Bay and enjoyed numerous anchorages, lobster-fishing villages, and a steady flow of classic windjammers. In Camden, Maine, the annual Windjammer Festival was in full swing. A short, steep climb on foot took us to the 780-foot peak of Mount Battie for spectacular views of Camden Harbor and Penobscot Bay.

From Rockland, Maine—with its active fishing industry, ­red-brick-lined downtown, and ferry terminal—we worked our way down the coast, anchoring in the lobster-fishing towns of Tenants Harbor and Port Clyde, home to the lighthouse we knew from the movie Forrest Gump. In lovely Boothbay Harbor, we stopped at Boothbay Harbor Marina, the most welcoming marina that we’d visited. 

After a final night at anchor in Harpswell, Maine, we made the final run into Portland, where we were met by the thickest fog we’d encountered during the entire journey. Anything more than 50 feet off our bow was not visible, including the city. To make our arrival even more dramatic, Hurricane Lee was expected in a few days. We had just enough time to get from there to Yarmouth, where we hauled out in record time—just before the storm hit. 

The trip truly changed Sandy and me. We increased our ­confidence and learned to face our fears. And we became even more familiar with boat systems—mechanical, electrical, ­plumbing, navigational and communications alike. 

We also changed our future plans, now wanting to make a sailboat our floating summer home. While we missed our friends and family, we learned that one can have an interesting social network while cruising. We were reacquainted with old friends, and made many new ones. 

The boating community shares common interests and ­experiences, and cruisers look out for one another, like in a real neighborhood. If you’re considering the Down East Circle as a future cruise, by all means, do it.

The post The Long Way Around appeared first on Cruising World.

Where does the fabled Northwest Passage—that ­tenuous, long-sought sea route between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans—­properly begin?  

For the keepers of official records, jealously counting how many of each sort of boat makes the transit each year, the answer is the Arctic Circle, at 66°30′ N. It begins when you cross into the Arctic going northward, and it ends when you cross out of it again southbound, 100 degrees of longitude away.

Others—often those attempting to kayak, paddleboard, kitesurf or dinghy across—count it from Pond Inlet at northern Baffin Island to the hamlet of Tuktoyaktuk, which is nearly on the US-Canada border. That’s a far shorter distance, and it cuts out nearly 1,000 miles of the difficult coast of Alaska, not to mention about 500 miles on the Atlantic side. 

Surely, we can forgive those with the audacity to try it in any sort of open craft. With our Stevens 47, Polar Sun, however, although we had crossed the Arctic Circle halfway through a cruise of Greenland’s coast from Nuuk to Ilulissat, we didn’t feel like our bid for the passage had properly begun until we wriggled out of the untidy raft-up of sailboats at the fish wharf in the inner harbor at Ilulissat. It was midafternoon and raining lightly as we dodged past icebergs at the harbor mouth, but neither time nor atmospheric moisture matters a whole lot in a place where the sun doesn’t set and you’re bundled head to toe against the cold anyway.

Having been going hard for weeks on end, with uncertainty and ice and everlasting cold, it was the longest sailing leg of my life.

We were bound across Baffin Bay for Pond Inlet, a four-day leg that took us closer to seven, and taught us that just because we’d gotten to Ilulissat ahead of schedule didn’t mean we were always going to get easy sailing.

We were used to icebergs by then. They’re mostly huge and visible. They’re easy to sail around, and their dangers are predictable and avoidable. But halfway across Baffin Bay, we encountered pack ice for the first time. We found it a far more chilling prospect. Being mostly flat and close to the surface, it doesn’t show up well on radar or forward-looking sonar, and it tends to hang tight. If you see one floe, there’s probably a whole bunch of them nearby, drifting amiably around together.

By the time we beat our way against a 20-knot breeze close to the craggy Baffin Island shore, we were hardly surprised to find icebergs drifting amid the barrier of pack ice that blocked the shore. Who says you can’t have it all?

When we had finally worked our way through the ice and up along the coast for another day, we were in for several surprises. The first was that a brand-new harbor with breakwalls and docks had just been built at Pond Inlet, so we didn’t have to anchor in a rolly roadstead like we had expected. The second was that although the town there was relatively close to Greenland, it couldn’t have been more different than the ones we’d just left. Lacking the warm current that Greenland enjoys, this area stays locked up in ice most of the year. There isn’t a whole lot to do in one place, and it’s easy to see why the native Inuit were once nomadic. It makes sense in a place where nature is so savage.

Pond Inlet was the first of only four settlements we visited in the next 2,000 miles. Between them lie mind-numbingly vast stretches of barren, cliff-filled islands where even lichens struggle to grow in the whorls and rings of frost-heaved gravel.

We didn’t linger too long in any one place—at least, not by choice—but ­hastened always, feeling the shortness of the navigable season, and knowing that the later we got to the Bering Sea, the ­better chance we had of getting clobbered by something nasty. After an iceberg-­fraught, lumpy, breezy passage of the Navy Board Inlet, we had an ­exceedingly pleasant sail diagonally up Lancaster Sound to Beechey Island.

Between the Beechey and King William islands is where the most pack ice can be expected. Some years, it’s so abiding that no small boats get through. We were lucky. A violent south wind flushed all the ice out of Peel Sound, our projected route. After a day anchored in Erebus and Terror Bay, a band of pack ice that had barred the way opened up just enough for Polar Sun to get through.

I had always heard of iceblink, a ­phenomenon where distant pack ice throws a glow along the horizon, making it impossible to judge how far off it is. I had thought I wanted to see it someday, but I realized as we raced toward the rapidly shrinking opening to Peel Sound that I could have done without it, at least when a fogbound island, a foul current and a whole lot of ice coming out of the blink were converging on Polar Sun.

It wasn’t the last time we would squeak through a narrow gap at the last minute. The next 500 miles saw us often in and out of ice. Twice, we were denied passage out of a bay where we ultimately spent nine days trapped in the pack, shifting from one ice floe to another. We almost didn’t make it out of there at all, and when we did, it was to find the way nearly shut farther along.

At last, though, we made it to Gjoa Haven on the south side of King William Island. We sighed with relief that the ice, at least, would trouble us no more—but given the trouble we did see for the next several thousand miles, perhaps a little ice would have been the least of it.

What we hadn’t accounted for was that Gjoa is barely halfway across the Northwest Passage. There was still such a long way to go, and now, each night was dark for a little longer than the prior.

Given the lateness of the season—those nine days in the ice had really set us back—we considered leaving the boat in Cambridge Bay for the winter, but the crane that had once hauled the occasional stray sailboat was no longer there. To leave the boat in the water would be to lose it. We had already lost two crew, who had to return home for work, and couldn’t lose the time to find more.

So, Mark Synnott, the expedition leader, and I doublehanded the six weary days to Tuktoyaktuk. It’s not that doublehanding is normally that bad, but having been going hard for weeks on end, with hopes raised and dashed, with uncertainty and ice and everlasting cold, it was the longest sailing leg of my life. Before we finally rounded Cape Bathurst and raced with a strong following wind into Tuk, we had spent eight hours hove-to in a midnight blow, overheated the engine, sailed the wrong direction with a lee shore wherever we could point the bows, and did I mention the cold?

Tuktoyaktuk is on the shallow, oil-rich shelf of the Beaufort Sea. The channel barely carries 2 fathoms into the harbor at the best of times. This was not one of those times; the strong wind that rushes unopposed over the featureless peninsula tends to blow water out of the harbor. Polar Sun grounded gently just abeam of the half-wrecked public wharf. We got lines ashore to take in when the tide should float her again, and we went ashore to eat with the relief crew, who had flown out to meet us.

Without that extra crew, that last leg across the north coast of Alaska and down to the Bering Sea would have been not just exhausting, but also dangerous. Even with the new life that David Thoresen and Ben Spiess breathed into our souls, the strong following wind and seas required constant watchfulness. We rounded Point Barrow, the northernmost point in Alaska, in a welter of muddy, breaking waves, with sleet whitening the weather side of every shroud and halyard. We had thought of stopping in Barrow for a rest, but the seas were too rowdy along the shore. Besides, the wind was fair to sail south, and south is where we wanted to go.

South, that is, until Point Hope, where we needed to tuck in and hide from a typhoon—yes, a typhoon. It had strayed beyond its reasonable bounds into the Bering Sea, not only bringing record flooding to the coastal communities, but also having the audacity to pass through the Bering Strait into the Chukchi Sea, where Polar Sun sheltered in the tenuous lee of a permafrost-topped sandbar.

The eye of the storm, still well-defined although weakening, came abeam of our anchorage and made it untenable. We weighed anchor for the last time and sailed deep-reefed straight toward the center of it. Tacking some hours later to claw across Kotzebue Sound, we had occasion to wish that Cambridge Bay had worked out. The wind drove Polar Sun farther from the Bering Strait, toward a shoreline guarded by poorly charted shallow sandbars and lagoons.

It was nearly dark when the wind relented enough that we could make a run toward Cape Prince of Wales. That was the last obstacle, and we hand-steered around it in pitch-blackness, hugging the shore as close as we dared to avoid a current offshore. With the lights of Wales close abeam, and with Polar Sun surfing at 9 knots down-sea, we were grateful that we couldn’t see.

Once properly in the Bering Sea, all the jumble of the strait settled down, as if turned off with a switch. We motored sedately into Nome, Alaska, in the late afternoon, just hours ahead of the next southerly gale that pounded that ­unforgiving coast.

For the record-keepers, the Northwest Passage was officially completed halfway across Kotzebue Sound, when Polar Sun crossed the Arctic Circle just north of the Bering Strait. For Mark and me, the only two of the 12 people on the trip to sail every mile, it wasn’t fully over even in Nome. There were sails to unbend and stow, halyards to messenger out. A whole winterization had to be done, and there were long flights, which undid in 12 hours the distance we had taken 112 days to sail, to endure.  

Where does the Northwest Passage end? For me, at least, it ends when you get home. 

The post Cruising the Northwest Passage appeared first on Cruising World.

A well-traveled friend once told me, “If you haven’t eaten with locals in their home, you haven’t fully experienced a place.” I used to think all that was required to check a country off your list was to exit the airport for more than 24 hours or step off the boat onto land. But my friend had a point. Could one really claim to have been somewhere after simply sightseeing and eating in restaurants? I started ticking off the places I’d visited, and was shocked to realize that by my friend’s standard, I’d hardly been anywhere.

But one can’t just cruise into a new port, knock on someone’s door and declare, “I’m here for dinner!” In most towns, you’d have to spend considerable time and make yourself available to folks for such an opportunity to arise. However, there is one spot my husband, Ken, and I have cruised where practically all you have to do is show up: Newfoundland (accent on the “land”). It is Canada’s most eastern province and the world’s 16th largest island. It is a mere day’s sail away from the northern tip of Nova Scotia. We cruised Newfoundland twice over five years, and fully enjoyed really getting to know the people and the place.

From the sea, at a distance, Newfoundland appears to be an impenetrable rock. Approaching closer, one can perceive the odd settlement at the base of cliffs, or a great fissure leading to a fjord. It is immense, foreboding, lonely and breathtaking. Sailing up the fjords and then hiking to their tops to take in the view is heavenly. Although Newfoundlanders are often shy at first, they are curious and extremely generous. It doesn’t take long for them to reach out.

During our initial visit, we’d barely stepped off the boat in Channel-Port aux Basques on the southwest corner of the island when Ken and I were offered a giant bagful of mackerel. When we sailed into little outports—the term used for small coastal communities throughout the province, with most of them accessible only by boat—folks would come down to the wharf just to stare at our vessel. This was a little disconcerting at first, but we quickly got used to it. I’d poke my head out of the companionway and greet whomever was coming to have a look at our “yacht,” Mary T. She’s an old Morgan 38, but we soaked up the moniker. After answering a few questions, mostly related to where we came from and where we were headed, the curious onlookers would launch into soliloquies about their own lives. Nothing inspires storytelling like a new set of ears! One man told us about the open-heart surgery he’d just undergone and even lifted up his shirt to reveal the scar.

Our first invitation transpired in the town of Francois, pronounced “Fransway.” Sailing into this outport on the southwest coast is truly magical. Brightly painted homes are nestled in a semicircle at the base of towering red cliffs. We had arrived in time for their five-year “come-home” celebration. A party was to be held in the community center that night for all those returning home. The exodus to work in the Alberta tar sands, on merchant ships in the Great Lakes, and in larger towns in Newfoundland emptied these small villages. But no one ever forgot where home was. And here we were, two complete strangers invited to join in the celebration. There was live music, dancing and plenty to drink. The parties don’t really get started until midnight, and we had shown up way too early, but it definitely gave us a taste of local color.

RELATED: Newfoundland Has it All

Another encounter of note on that visit occurred in the town of Isle aux Morts (Island of the Dead), just 6 miles to the east of Channel-Port aux Basques. We tucked ourselves behind a sturdy government-­constructed wharf and set out a spiderweb of lines. Hurricane Bill was coming, and it seemed the best place to hide. It was only a Category 1 and weakening, so the locals weren’t terribly concerned; they are frequently battered by 60-knot winds in the winter. A man named Tom Harvey pulled his large power cruiser up to the wharf in front of Mary T. He was the descendant of a local family who, in the 1800s, rescued many shipwrecked souls clinging to the jagged rocks littering the waters just offshore.

We gratefully accepted when Tom offered us hot showers at his house. Then we were provided with drinks and snacks. His wife even gave us a jar of pickled herring to go. Although we didn’t share a full-blown meal, I think that counts. Another local, the dockmaster, drove us to Channel-Port aux Basque for diesel, and shared the town gossip. We were sworn to secrecy, so I can’t tell what he said, but there was more controversy in that little port than we’d imagined. He presented us with a jar of stewed moose meat before we parted ways. We felt embraced.

On our return to Newfoundland five years later, we sailed along the southwest coast to the town of Grey River. It is up a narrow fjord, the opening of which is invisible until you’re practically on top of it. We spotted a wooden dock at the edge of town and pulled Mary T alongside. At some outports, a dockmaster will appear and collect a small fee ($5 to $10 per night), and sometimes it’s free. It’s all very casual. Eager to explore, we ventured up a path, which led us past the dump and through the cemetery to a platform overlooking the fjord. It was a beautiful sunny day, but eventually the flies won out, and we ­hightailed it back down.

On our way back to the boat, we ­encountered some townspeople, and a few minutes into chatting, we were invited to Nate’s 60th birthday party at the lodge that evening. “Of course we’ll come,” I said. Nate didn’t know us from Adam, but that was of no concern to anyone. We cleaned up as best we could and arrived at the lodge earlier than most.

Before the party really got started, one of the lodge members took us upstairs to see the inner sanctum. It was a large, barren, wood-paneled room with a sort of altar at one end containing photographs of important members. “Have you ever seen anything like this before?” he asked. We didn’t know quite what we were looking at nor what to say. With his thick Newfoundland accent, we found it difficult to understand his explanation of the lodge’s history.

Then Ken said brightly, “Well, we have been to an Elks lodge in Maryland.”

The man laughed and asked, “You mean like the Flintstones?”

Downstairs at the party, there were chairs around the periphery and a table at one end for the potluck dishes. John at the general store had told us to be sure to try the pork buns, which are biscuits with salt pork and raisins. I tried one of those and a pork rib, some ham, a chicken wing and whatever else I could fit on my plate. In addition to the cornucopia of pork treats, there was a large sheet cake boasting a Photoshopped image of Nate with two scantily clad Brazilian women in carnival garb. I think we were more surprised by it than Nate. As soon as the band struck up, the dancing began. One man played the accordion, and another was on guitar and vocals. Their repertoire ran the gamut from country to polka to zydeco to rock, and it was impressively loud.

Because it was five years since our last visit to Newfoundland, Francois was having its come-home celebration again (timing!). When we pulled up to the wharf, the whole town was down by the water for dory races. I tried to sign up, but I was a little too late and couldn’t find a partner because Ken wasn’t interested. A lot of the folks were not accustomed to rowing, so it was a great source of amusement to all.

That afternoon, we attended a talent show in the community center. People sang and read poetry. One man sang a song about how everyone was moving away from the little Newfoundland outports in the wake of the declining fisheries so the towns were closing down. I looked around and saw most of the audience wiping away tears. One woman near me who couldn’t stop crying nodded at me and said, “That’s how it is.”

I was in the small grocery store a little later, scouring the aisles and pushing one of the tiny carts that no one ever seemed to use. Most people just shopped for a few items at a time. A young couple looked at me with the cart and laughed. I smiled. They asked where I was from. “We used to live in Washington, D.C., but we’ve been living on our boat for several years.”

“That’s cool,” the man said. “I’m from Halifax, but my girlfriend is from Francois. I bought a house here with another friend. The purple one down by the water.” He made a ­gesture in the general ­direction. “We’re having a party tonight, before the big one at the community center. C’mon over.”

“Thanks! We will.”

I couldn’t wait to tell Ken. We were invited to a pre-party with all the cool people! It was being held in the fishing shack behind the purple house, which had been transformed into party central with festive lights and a bar. Wow! We learned from our host, Greg, that he’d paid only $7,000 for the house and fishing shack. I couldn’t believe it. Now I wanted to buy a house in Newfoundland!

Everyone was having such a good time catching up with old friends and relatives that it took a lot to get us all motivated to go to the big party at the community center. It was bustling when we arrived. We drank and danced with many partners until 2 a.m., which is way past our bedtime. Finally we dragged ourselves out, wended our way back to Mary T, and climbed into the V-berth. We did not want to get up in the morning, which is how everyone else in Francois felt that day. We knew because we were really there.

Thank you, Newfoundlanders, for giving so much of yourselves and allowing us to know you. Now it’s no longer enough to sail into a new port and just provision, sightsee, and meet other cruisers. A new bar has been set. We mustn’t leave until we’ve dined with the locals. So set your tables, folks. Ready or not, here we come!

The post Cruising Newfoundland: Local Charm Awaits appeared first on Cruising World.

I’d never leave the Sunshine Coast. All there is up there are bears and bad weather.”

Having sailed Keala, our Jeanneau 44i, from her birthplace, La Rochelle, France, across the Atlantic, we found ourselves talking to a gregarious fellow sailor at a yacht club in the warm, protected confines of Sidney, British Columbia, in the lee of Vancouver Island. I told him of our intended voyage, up the inside of Vancouver Island with my sister and her family to Port McNeill, where we’d meet my father, now 94 years old, and his lady friend, Christine, for a cruise north to the next island chain, Haida Gwaii. I’d make the return trip doublehanded along the rugged west coast of Vancouver Island with a surfing friend from Hawaii.

“Lots of fog up there too,” replied our new friend.

In a life of sailing around the world, my father, Donald, has wrung more salt water out of his socks than most of us will ever see. He dislikes sitting in the harbor. The world is full of “harbor-sitters,” as he calls them, trading “horror stories” of deadly gales over drinks while waiting for perfect weather conditions to leave the dock. Although he has been called adventurous, or even reckless, over the years, depending on the observer, I’ve always known him to be a very cautious captain who took my brother, sister, mother and me safely across two major oceans to places as varied as Norway, Turkey, the Philippines and Vanuatu. In all those miles, I can’t recall ever being in a dangerous sea. As kids we missed a lot of school, but we came back with skills such as celestial navigation, and the experience of standing a night watch with the safety of everyone aboard in our young hands.

Among the many places we visited together, one of my father’s all-time favorites was the First Nations reserve of Gwaii Haanas on Moresby Island, part of the Haida Gwaii archipelago, where ancient totem poles still stand sentinel over majestic Haida village sites. When my father told me he wanted to make one more trip out there with Christine, I pulled out the charts. Vancouver Island’s system of ferries, roads and air service would allow me to rotate my crew among three generations, as well as several old friends from voyages past.

My father may well be right about not listening to those dire dockside warnings about bears and bad weather, but our fellow sailor actually did have a point: Why leave the safety and comfort of the inside route? There are cruising grounds enough in the Inside Passage to keep a cruiser busy for a lifetime. Most of the thousands of mariners in places such as Seattle, Washington, and Sidney, don’t leave protected waters, because they don’t have to. With a few notable exceptions, it’s possible to sail through the intricate network of islands and fjords of the Inside Passage from Tacoma, just south of Seattle, to Alaska’s panhandle, without encountering much open sea. And the weather really is better. Summer temperatures in places like the protected Sunshine Coast, to which our friend referred, range in the 60s and 70s, and water temperatures get up to the 70s in long, fjordlike inlets. Swimming is actually a thing.

This is not to say that cruising the inside route isn’t without its challenges. First among these are strong tidal currents. The more-constricted passages turn into turbulent rapids with currents in double digits. Since it’s impossible for sailboats and other low-powered vessels to negotiate these rapids, it is essential to arrive at slack water. When possible, we also try to plan for slack ebb or flood so as to carry a favorable current as far along our course as possible. Another challenge is an astounding number of logs. Logging is a major industry in British Columbia, and loose logs, some barely submerged, can disable a small boat, so a constant lookout is required. Tugs towing thousands of logs in huge “booms” may require the entire channel to maneuver, as we found when forced into an impromptu jibing drill first thing in the morning on our way out of port. Common practice is to keep a watch on VHF 16 in narrow channels, and wait your turn after the last oncoming vessel uses the end of the tide to get through. Large car ferries also commonly cross the channels at oblique angles, traveling at high speeds. They always have the right of way, a fact of which they seem well aware.

As our friend forecast, fog became a challenge the moment we emerged into Queen Charlotte Strait, north of the protection of Vancouver Island. It was often very thick in the mornings, which meant keeping an eye on the AIS, radar, nearby fishermen, ferries and logs all at the same time. Most days saw the fog mercifully burn off by midafternoon.

The highlight of the entire route inside Vancouver Island for my sister was sailing into nearby Broughton Archipelago. For once we had favorable wind, and we had sailed 25 miles inland up the Tribune Channel, which became like a fjord between immense rock cliffs. Suddenly a gray whale blew to starboard, while a pod of hundreds of fast, agile Pacific white-sided dolphins reached nearly across the entire channel, surfacing in quick succession. They raced past as a group, so in rhythm that they looked like a breaking wave, much to the delight of my 16-year-old niece, Molly. Furling our sails at the head of the channel, we found the friendly little floating dock at Kwatsi Bay Marina nestled in a steep bowl of mountains. A group of veteran cruisers were surrounded by food and drink, well into the local happy-hour tradition.

Tracy Dixon, a surfing friend I’d met as kid while cruising in the Philippines, met the boat near the old fishing town and First Nations community of Alert Bay, at the north end of the Vancouver Island. After a distinguished career defusing bombs for the Navy, Tracy had just completed a degree in anthropology at the University of Hawaii. He’d already learned about Alert Bay’s famous U’mista Cultural Center, a cutting-edge modern museum that houses a treasure of elaborate and wondrous dance masks of the local First Nations group with the nearly unpronounceable name of Kwakwaka’wakw.

Many of these ancient masks have made epic journeys, only recently making their way back home to this museum. The giving of gifts at great “potlatch” ceremonies was a cultural tradition during which chiefs gained status through their ability to give offerings to the people. This of course put the Kwakwaka’wakw directly at odds with their new capitalist masters. The potlatch was outlawed in 1884, and many irreplaceable works of art were confiscated by the government. Some were sold to private collectors and museums overseas. For the locals, bringing these treasures home to their own land is akin to the return of a long-lost relative, and for us it provides a great opportunity to see masks that hold tremendous power and embody the imagination, artistry, and beliefs of the past and also the living native people. We were also fortunate to see an impressive dance performance by the local Tsasatla group, in which local youths take on the character of traditional masks and costumes of animals and fantastic creatures.

The southern section of Haida Gwaii, on Moresby Island, is a Haida Heritage site called Gwaii Haanas. Home to the Haida for over 1,500 years, the area was abruptly abandoned when smallpox decimated the population. Today there are village sites with large communal houses gradually returning to the forest, and elaborately carved totem poles are still standing. Haida guides called Watchmen, many of them descendants of those who first lived in the villages, now live in cabins at the sites, working as historical interpreters. These are fascinating people, living links to the past. While it’s a privilege to see such archaeological treasures, talking with someone whose ancestors lived here is even better.

The Watchmen appear to enjoy having visitors, and thanks to a permit system, the number of guests is regulated, so they aren’t too swamped by arrivals. We had some great interactions with the Watchmen. An old friend of mine from Santa Cruz, whom I’ve known since my days teaching sailing there during college, Burke Murphy, flew all the way from France to join us. Burke is a shipwright who lives and works in the south of France, where he does fine woodwork on classic sailing yachts. He was astounded to learn that the Haida use Sitka spruce—in his world a prized boatbuilding material—mainly for firewood. The Watchman casually offered to sell him a few ancient trees from the protected reserve, something so ridiculous that we burst out laughing. Like many island cultures, the Haida appear to value a good joke.

Read More from Tor Johnson: Chartering is Raiatea

For us, the old whaling station at Rose Harbor was particularly interesting. On the southern tip of Gwaii Haanas, Rose Harbor is actually the only privately owned area in the reserve. A small group of young people provide home cooking from a rustic cabin to the hungry kayakers and sailors who pass through. One of the people working there told us of a Haida war canoe in the forest, which we found after some searching through the huge cedar trees. It appeared as though the canoe was under construction when it was abandoned, possibly with the arrival of smallpox. The tree had been expertly felled to allow access from below and above so that carvers could shape the hull. The inside of the canoe had been only partially hollowed out, leaving the middle section as solid wood. We later learned that it was common to leave much of the inside intact to retain as much strength in the hull as possible for the precarious task of moving it to the sea. Finding a piece of history like this in its native setting was somehow moving, and in the quiet of the trees we could imagine what this canoe might have been, with a full complement of proud Haida warriors.

My father enjoyed the solitude of the remote anchorages we visited, surrounded by immense trees, sea otters and soaring eagles, while Christine, an accomplished artist, made amazing drawings of the scenes. My father has always been the captain who did it all, the first one to tackle any job, easy or hard, so it bothers him that at 94, he isn’t able to do the heavier work of sailhandling. I try to remind him that after all, that’s what he trained me for. I’m just lucky to still have the chance to sail with him.

British Columbia has large numbers of black bears, and the impressive grizzly (Ursus arctos horribilis, or simply “brown bear”) can be found up several inlets, such as Knight, Rivers and Bute. We knew we were in bear territory when we stopped at the friendly, family-run North Island Marina in Port McNeill, the preferred reprovisioning stop for the Broughton Archipelago and environs. The marina’s garbage drop had been literally ripped apart, great gashes in the plywood siding attesting to the formidable power of the bears’ claws. That said, we found most bears to be shy of us humans, the most dangerous of all predators by a long shot.

My shipwright friend Burke was an excellent lookout, and he was keen to see a bear. He picked up the binoculars whenever he sighted anything even remotely bearlike on shore. It wasn’t until we were motoring in to Rose Harbor that he finally sighted a large black bear on the beach. It was a nice sunny day, and we watched as the husky bear ambled down to the water, waded in for a cool bath, shook off, and ambled casually back up the beach and into the forest. We felt as though we’d been shown a little slice of bear life.

Generally, we had fantastic weather. That said, it would be unusual not to experience at least a few powerful North Pacific low-pressure systems during the course of a summer as far as 50 degrees north latitude, and our trip was no exception. Having crossed the notorious Hecate Strait to Haida Gwaii from the British Columbia mainland, we heard gale warnings forecast on the VHF, and headed for narrow Sac Bay, which is almost completely surrounded by steep hillsides, close in to mountainous Moresby Island. Thankfully, both the Canadian and US coast guards regularly broadcast a fairly accurate forecast via VHF, which is updated several times daily. Unfortunately, our perfectly sheltered anchorage turned out to be subject to powerful downdrafts and torrents of rain that created new waterfalls as we watched. Beginning to feel a bit trapped in the prison of our own choosing, we spent our time visiting other boats also hiding from the weather, and ended up making friends with “sailing royalty,” an experienced sailing couple aboard Kinetic, their Beneteau First 47.7, on which David Sutcliffe has skippered no less than five Victoria-Maui races, as well as the Sydney-Hobart. We chatted in their diesel-heated cabin while munching on cake that his wife, Gaylean, had just baked, and listened to buoy reports of steep seas in Hecate Strait. Because it is so shallow—less than 30 feet in places—and open to the south, open-ocean swells tend to pile on top of themselves in chaotic seas. As we listened, reports came in of 15-foot seas at 4.5 seconds. In these conditions, the Hecate would be mostly white water.

As the gale passed with more torrents of rain, I began to wonder if perhaps the surrounding mountains weren’t creating their own foul weather, so we left without waiting for the rain and wind to abate. We found much milder conditions farther off the mountains, just offshore near Hotspring Island. We soaked in the divine hot springs while looking back at Sac Bay, still covered in a hard rain surrounding the mountains, and congratulated ourselves on such a good anchorage choice.

One thing the Pacific Northwest is not famous for is great sailing. Winds are often light and variable, especially in the more-protected areas popular with cruisers. The running joke is that most sailboats here sail with their sail covers on, which actually seems kind of true, or that a sailboat is just a powerboat with funny sticks. It’s really not by chance that the power trawler is the boat of choice for the Northwest. That said, when the wind actually is right, the sailing among rugged peaks covered in evergreens can be utterly magical, somewhat like sailing in an endless mountain lake. We try to get the sails up whenever we can, even if that often means furling them after a few minutes.

British Columbia has such a complex coastline and so many potential anchorages that a good cruising guide is essential. We had the Waggoner Cruising Guide in hand at almost all times, and having Active Captain—Garmin’s crowdsourced, up-to-date electronic guide—on our chart plotter was also a huge help, with many firsthand recent accounts to read. Don Douglass’ several guide books of the area also come recommended.

The anchorages were spectacular, some tucked into the mountains and trees with an inlet only a few feet wider than the boat, with the feel of a serene lake. Others were protected within groups of small islands sheltering them from the open ocean. The Waggoner guide was accurate about one group in particular: the spectacular Bunsby Islands, where we had perfect swimming weather. Waggoner advises that it is essential to stop because other sailors who had done so would inevitably ask if you’d visited, “and you don’t want to disappoint them.”

That said, the British Columbia coast is also a great place to ignore the cruising guides. There are thousands of potential anchorages available, with reasonable depths and good holding. And we found that our Navionics charts were quite accurate but, of course, not infallible. So it’s feasible to find one’s own anchorage, based on the current and expected conditions. My favorite anchorages were those that we chose simply because they looked interesting on the chart, and many turned out to be magical. There is something special about finding your own place, without knowing exactly what you might find there—a little like the first explorers but with a plush yacht.

Our descent of Vancouver Island’s west coast was late in the season (September), so most of the fishing lodges had emptied, and the few cruising boats that travel the west coast had mostly moved on. Our first stop on the outside was Guise Bay, on the extreme northwestern tip of the island, just inside notorious Cape Scott. Although untenable in southerly winds, it’s a paradise in northerlies. As proved the rule on the west coast, we found ourselves the only boat anchored off an immense crescent of white sand beach. In fact, we rarely saw another boat.

Yuquot—or Friendly Cove, as Capt. James Cook nicknamed it—was fascinating as a place where First Nations and Europeans have long collided. An old church represents this long struggle, with stained-glass representations of treaties between Spain and England asserting their influence over the area.

At Hot Springs Cove, a half-hour hike along a boardwalk paved with treads carved with the names of visiting yachts from all over the world, brings you to a small and magical hot spring with a hot waterfall you can stand under. It’s essential to catch it before hordes of tourists arrive from Tofino via high-speed boats around 8 a.m., or after they all leave at 6 p.m. Tofino is BC’s surf mecca, and while it is a quaint town with amazing beaches, it’s so full of marinas, high-speed RIBs and seaplane traffic that it feels more like Miami than the secluded west coast of Vancouver Island.

We encountered rough seas a few times on our trip down the outside coast, usually when we put to sea a bit hastily at the tail end of a gale. The thousands of off-lying rocks necessitated careful navigation, even with the excellent digital charts for the area. Being bluewater sailors, we didn’t have a problem with the near-constant Pacific swell, which conversely helps the navigator by marking shallow rocks with plumes of spray.

Keala hosted several generations on this voyage around Vancouver Island—my sister and her family, several sailing friends from around the world and, of course, my dad and artistic Christine, in some of the world’s most pristine cruising grounds. It looks like the years have failed to dull my father’s enthusiasm for cruising. He still feels the same about sitting in the harbor and could barely sit still for a day, even during gale warnings. He prefers to carry on, despite the bears and bad weather.

Tor Johnson is a marine photographer based in Hawaii. You can view more of his work on his website (tjhawaii.com).

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We had to tack away at the last minute. Opus, a C&C 43, was just a few boat lengths ahead, and that was enough to make all the difference. The barge bore down on us both with the tenacity of a creature little inclined to slow down or change course. Our sails were sheeted in tight, playing the delicate balance of speed and point. The crew was quiet, eyes trained, muscles taut, minds wondering, Would we play chicken with a bird that big?

It was day one of the 12-day 580-mile race around Vancouver Island, British Columbia, and our grit was already being tested aboard Kotuku, a Farr 1220. But that’s exactly what I love about the biennial Van Isle 360 race. Every day dishes up a new plate of struggles and surprises. It is an event that converts cruisers into racers (if only temporarily) and taunts racers with glimpses into the joys of cruising in some of the most extraordinary sailing grounds in the world. After seeing the beauty of Vancouver Island’s west coast go whizzing by between tacks on our 30-hour upwind leg in washing-machine seas, I vowed to return. I promised myself I would cruise these waters slowly, stopping at every one of those intriguing nooks and bays.

With an unassuming “Let’s go,” almost in a whisper, the tactician called the tack, and all nine of us sprang into action to turn out of the path of the oncoming brutish barge. We watched as Opus squeaked by just ahead, its sleek lines and trimmed sails disappearing behind towering piles of timber. When they reappeared moments later, there was a collective exhale, the synchronized end of a breath held in ­anticipation of seeing that sail glide by unscathed.

Far from hurting us, our humility (along with some grit, dedication and a not insignificant amount of practice) carried us to a first-place trophy. And the experience of that race carried me on to pursue a life of cruising. Five years later, I kept that promise to return, cruising that same coast nice and slow. This time, I soaked up every unhurried minute of my wandering path in and out of sounds and inlets, crossing well behind every tug and tow I saw.

The post Nick of Time appeared first on Cruising World.

The thrum of the diesel engine reverberated through the teak deck and up through the soles of my heavy furry boots as Passing Cloud slipped smoothly through the almost-black waters of British Columbia’s Seaforth Channel. The Heiltsuk First Nation community of Bella Bella faded into the distance as we headed out on our adventure in the Great Bear Rainforest. Overhead, the skies were leaden, promising rain, much to the joy of the crew.

As a fair-weather sailor, the idea of a rainy week aboard the 71-foot classic wooden schooner sent chills up my spine. But I understood their joy and simply added another layer of clothing.

After all, when summer turns to fall, and wild Pacific salmon migrate toward their native rivers for spawning, “pray for rain” is the cry echoed all around the area. This year, the rivers were too low, causing major concern that the annual rains would be coming too late for the iconic fish.

Salmon are the lifeblood of the area’s First Nation people, who rely on the yearly migrations not just for food, but also as the symbols of abundance, fertility, prosperity and renewal. This all tied into Passing Cloud‘s overreaching commitment of connecting people with nature, fostering stewardship, and reducing their carbon footprint.

This was my second trip aboard Passing Cloud. A couple of years earlier, I was lucky enough to experience a voyage to Haida Gwaii—also known as the Queen Charlotte Islands—an experience I won’t ever forget. When this trip presented itself, I jumped at the opportunity to explore the Great Bear Rainforest in mainland British Columbia.

The Rainforest is a wild and dramatic region, one of the world’s largest, intact temperate forests that covers more than 24,000 square miles of land and sea. The spectacular scenery forms a backdrop for whales, dolphins, bears, wolves, sea lions, sea otters, and a vast variety of pelagic birds that depend on the health and viability of the wild Pacific salmon.

Hence the joyful prospect of rain after the dry summer.

Passing Cloud‘s crew included Russ Markel, skipper and owner of the boat and a marine biologist; Liam Ogle, the widely traveled and experienced first mate; Erin Vickars, our super-­talented Red Seal chef (the designation comes from a prestigious Canadian internship); and Briony Penn, our onboard expert with an encyclopedic knowledge of the flora, fauna and people of the area. And then the six guests, including me, who had flown in from around the world to experience this once-in-a-lifetime trip. They included a couple from South Africa, a single woman from England and a local couple from Vancouver.

It felt good and familiar to be back on board, and as I looked around, I noted the upgrades and other changes that had been made during the intervening couple of years. Most significantly, a set of new, flexible solar panels covered the top of the pilothouse, which significantly increased battery life. They also significantly decreased the boat’s carbon footprint, a major component of Passing Cloud‘s mission.

One of the unique aspects of these adventure trips is that although there is a basic timeframe and itinerary, the tides, weather and animal sightings rule. Insider knowledge and boat-to-boat communications play a huge part, with unexpected sightings and information constantly (and sometimes drastically) altering our route. But the location of whales and other animals one day can change by miles overnight, so there is never a guarantee that the animals will be sighted. The biggest challenge was to spot the elusive “White Spirit,” or Kermode bear, a rare subspecies of the black bear.

According to legends of the Gitga’at and Kitasoo Native ­peoples, Raven, the creator of the rainforest who made everything green, decided to make 1 in 10 black bears white, to remind him of the time when the world was white with snow and ice. Raven decided to set aside a special area of the world for these bears, which is now known as the Great Bear Rainforest.

The general itinerary was to go west, then turn north around Ivory Island, zigzagging up and around Princess Royal Island; proceed east and then south through the Fiordland Conservancy, ducking between Susan and Dowager islands; and then head a few miles north to Klemtu, an isolated fishing village. Then it would be south, and finally back east to end up where we started, in Bella Bella.

Before we were even underway, the steady flow of food began. Erin, our young chef, produced gourmet meals around the clock. From early-morning coffee to a late-evening dessert, the food kept coming. As a professionally trained chef, Erin didn’t simply prepare food—she presented beautifully plated meals.

A new feature of these trips aboard Passing Cloud is that each dinner is themed to express the experiences of that particular day. We had appetizers that depicted birds’ nests on the day we saw the sandhill cranes. And a chocolate-ganache dessert with tiny bear prints on the first day we saw bears. We even enjoyed unique woven cucumber strips topped with creme fraiche and salmon roe, the weaving representing the baskets used by the people indigenous to the area.

But more important, the choice of foods pointed to the sustainability aspect of the trip. As much as possible, food and supplies are sourced locally, which is a feat unto itself, given the remote location. During our eight days aboard, we saw only one other community, Klemtu, besides our departure port of Bella Bella. The menu included fresh local seafood and vegetables, supplemented with foraged greens from shore excursions. Several dinners were vegetarian, going along with sustainability, but Erin is very conscious of nutrition, and the meals were completely balanced. Two large ice chests and a freezer on deck, packed with supplies that were either flown in or brought in by boat, formed the basis of the menu. We were so well-fed that at one stage, I had to ask for smaller portions and declined the between-meal snacks.

As we wove our way up the channel on that first day, the only other vessels we saw were a couple of small commercial fishing boats. Cruising slowly, binoculars and cameras at the ready, we passed by the classic Ivory Island lighthouse, its fresh white walls and bright-red roof shining in the sun that peaked out from behind the lowering clouds.

And then…our first humpback whale sighting. Sharp eyes spied the spray shooting into the air, then the curve of an enormous back slipped above the water, followed by the iconic tail flap. Although they were a distance away, cameras snapped madly. Little did we know how plentiful these gentle giants are in the area and how many we would see.

The humpbacks were hunted to near ­extinction in the mid-1900s, but after a whaling ban in 1965, the population has grown to between 3,000 and 5,000, according to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. Part of Passing Cloud‘s mission is to educate guests about the wildlife of the area, and true to that mission, Briony produced a large, notated poster of whale flukes, each identified by its particular markings. We compared our own images with those on the poster with some success. Unfortunately, many of the identifying markings are man-­inflicted, because these slow-moving giants are often injured by boats and caught in fishing nets. A recent law requires boats to remain 300 feet from the whales, but because they remain submerged for extended times, it’s sometimes impossible to avoid them, as we later discovered.

Our days took on a certain rhythm. Early-morning coffee, watching the sun rise over the densely forested hills and islands, then perhaps a Zodiac excursion ashore before a hearty breakfast underway. Breakfast time often included a recap of the previous day and a look at the chart for the current day. Then a lunch stop, and on sunny days, we’d enjoy our meal on deck. After lunch, another shore excursion to go looking for bears, then back to Passing Cloud for a snack before our spectacular dinner. Conversation around the dinner table was always lively, with the crew regaling us with local-history observations and personal adventures.

Because of the inclement weather, preparing to go ashore was always a bit of a mission. First came the long underwear and wool socks. Then layers—on top we had a shirt, sweater, coat and rain jacket, and then added rain pants over jeans. On top of all that were knee-high boots, gloves and hat, and a lifejacket. By the time I was suited up, I felt like the Michelin Man. Glamour was not a priority aboard Passing Cloud.

Of course, no one was required to make any of the shoreside excursions, but even on a couple of the days with heavy rain, we all suited up, climbed into the Zodiac for a short ride, then waded ashore, carefully navigating the rocky foreshore. Either Russ or Liam accompanied us, but Briony, our onboard naturalist, was on every excursion, providing an ongoing show and tell. We learned the ways of the black bears, of the sandhill cranes, and how to prepare special tea from what to the untrained eye were just twigs. She showed us wild blueberries, and on occasions when chef Erin came ashore, she and Briony foraged for sea asparagus and other local greens that later that day would grace our dinner plates.

Going ashore was always an adventure. For my inexperienced eye, the trails we hiked were almost impossible to see. But as Russ and Briony led us on these forays into the forest, we learned that these were bear trails, which in itself was a bit disconcerting. We clambered up and down hills, over fallen trees, ducking under bushes and limbs that hung low over the trail.

On one of the more memorable excursions, after landing in a narrow, rocky inlet and wading ashore, with Russ in the lead and Briony bringing up the rear, we hiked to an area known for bears. By this time, the rains had increased the river’s flow and there was hope that the salmon would be starting to make the migration upriver. And if that were the case, then the bears would be ready and waiting for them.

We broke through the dense growth and found ourselves high on a bank overlooking a raging waterfall that tumbled into a rocky pool. This scenario, we learned, was ideal for watching for bears. As we sat quietly up among the trees and waited, a black bear silently materialized on the rocks below us. It ambled along the riverbank and made its way to the pool, where it seemed to contemplate the situation, and then leaped into the water, apparently searching for salmon. As we sat in awe, the bear clambered ashore and spent a while exploring the area. And for a heart-stopping minute, it looked like it was going to climb the bank to depart on the bear trail we had just used. “Just move back from the trail and stay completely still,” Russ told us. The bear seemed to consider whether to come our way, and happily, it chose to go back the way it had come.

Although we weren’t lucky enough to spot a Spirit Bear during our time aboard, we did spend time watching a mama grizzly bear and her three cubs foraging and fording a wide stream to pick wild apples, watched over by literally dozens of eagles that roosted in the trees overlooking the feeding sites. The three cubs acted like typical youngsters, roughhousing and rushing flocks of seagulls nearby, causing them all to take flight.

The area we sailed was so remote that on a couple of late afternoons, coming into our overnight anchorage, we almost felt affronted by the sight of another boat there before us. And traveling through the narrow channels and fjords, we seldom saw any other vessels, so when we spied the Alaska Marine Highway ferry that runs between Port Hardy and Prince Rupert heading our way, we were like school kids, waving to it as it traveled south.

Twenty-plus years ago, this vast area was threatened by overlogging and decimation of the First Nations that have called it home for centuries. During those years, a historic agreement was reached between the B.C. government, the First Nations and environmentalists, which is a road map for other regions of the world. Collaboration resulted in the 2016 Great Bear Rainforest Land Use Order and Great Bear Rainforest (Forest Management) Act, a consensus-based decision-making model that works toward protecting both the cultural and ecological heritage for future generations.

Klemtu, the only community we visited, is a beneficiary of the historic agreement. We were fortunate to visit the longhouse and hear the history of the Kitasoo tribe of Tsimshians, originally from Kitasu Bay, and the Xai’xais of Kynoch Inlet, people who make the enclave their home. And we toured a community-development project, the Spirit Bear Lodge, where our one trinket-hungry crewmember was able to buy a memento. Klemtu is accessible only by boat or seaplane, and very infrequent ferry service.

The Great Bear Sea is teeming with life both above and below. At last count, 210 species of plants, 80 types of birds, 190 marine invertebrate species, 50 fish species, 20 kinds of mammals and reptiles, and 120 different kinds of seaweed are found in this magical place. We cruised the shoreline and meandered through the rocky channels, some so narrow that Liam spent his time as lookout on the bow, ensuring that Russ avoided the numerous unmarked hazards. We passed by a scattering of huge rocks, covered in Steller sea lions, and hung there for a while, simply observing (and smelling) them as they enjoyed the sun that had reappeared. Being so close to shore, we came close to flocks of sandhill cranes without disturbing them. We sailed with a pod of Dall’s porpoises as they went into a feeding frenzy right off the bow. Salmon swam and jumped at the river entrances, waiting for the rain. And overhead, we saw an ever-changing kaleidoscope of peregrine falcons, bald eagles, sandhill cranes, murrelets, shearwaters, cormorants and oyster catchers.

RELATED: The Wild West Coast of Vancouver Island

On our penultimate day aboard, the weather cleared, the sun came out, and the forests and horizons that had looked dark and forbidding lightened up as we sailed under clear skies back toward Bella Bella. It felt so good: the sun warm on my face and the boat so responsive and alive as I drove it to our final night’s anchorage.

Picking my most memorable moment of the trip is difficult. There were so many amazing sights and sounds, but being a Pisces, I have to say that one particular encounter is first and foremost in my memories.

We had numerous humpback whale sightings during the trip, and they were always a thrill to see. But about halfway through the journey, we saw a pod off in the distance as we cruised north. Suddenly, we were surrounded by several of them, really close, almost within touching distance. Russ immediately shutdown the engine, and we simply drifted for an hour or more, with whales cavorting all around us. They came up alongside, rolling slightly, one eye checking us out, then made a slow move underwater, sometimes directly from port to starboard, beneath the boat. Standing at the stern, I watched in amazement as the wheel turned all by itself as the whales brushed against the rudder. Standing there, getting completely drenched in the spray as the humpbacks blew close aboard on either side, I felt as close to nature as anyone could ever be.

Then, sadly, as if on cue, they all sounded, and we were left alone on a silent sea with our most amazing memories.

*Susan Colby is an independent photojournalist and editor who follows the sun, avoiding winter at all costs, while writing about sailing, travel and craft distilleries. *

Heading For Outer Shores

Passing Cloud is a William Roué-designed 71-foot schooner, built in 1974 in Victoria, British Columbia, by Brian Walker. Although designed specifically for cruising, it proved to be surprisingly fast, winning many races in the Pacific Northwest, including the 1984 San Francisco Master Mariners Race, the first non-American boat to do so. Considering Roué also designed the famous schooner Bluenose, this wasn’t surprising. Passing Cloud logged thousands of miles over the years, down the West Coast and south to Tahiti, before returning home to British Columbia, where in 2012 it was bought by Russ Markel, founder of Outer Shores Expeditions, a small-ship, niche-adventure travel company operating wildlife, wilderness and cultural expeditions in British Columbia.

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