Back to Barkley Sound

The following morning Jason had a meeting so Emma, the boys and I walked to Zoe's Bakery for more delicious treats. When we got back to the docks I ran into my old high school friend and we spent an hour catching up on life after high school. At noon, we fired up the engine, waved good-bye to friends and pushed off the dock heading back out to Barkley Sound. It was so fun to watch Emma grin ear to ear as she experienced her first taste of life on a sailboat.

We anchored at Clark Island and promptly dropped the kayaks in the water so we could paddle to shore. At this point I am going to let you read what Emma wrote about our hike on Clark Island because I can't even come close to capturing the feelings she so beautifully and poetically portrays. I love seeing these magical experiences through fresh eyes. We've hiked on so many islands in so many places, and though we love it, sometimes we take things for granted or as "just normal." Thank you Emma for reminding us of the magic of the world that we are so blessed to explore and spend so much time in.

The following day we paddled over to Benson Island. After visiting the statue of the First Man of the Broken Group and reading his story we hiked through the mossy forest to the other side of the island to check out a blowhole. The tide was low so we only heard a faint whoomf as water gently flowed in and out. As we scrambled across the rocks we peered into tiny tide pools scattered among the nooks and crannies in the craggy shore. In one of the pools I found a treasure, a rock with a perfect circle "drilled" into it, that I decided to leave with the First Man. I thought it would make a nice addition to his collection of treasures other visitors had left for him. When we got back across the island I discovered that the stone fit perfectly in his clenched hand almost like they were made for each other. Must have been destiny :).

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Drying out in Ucluelet

Our original plan was to stay in Barkley Sound four nights but after night three of rain we threw in the towel and headed to Ucluelet where we could fix our heater. The entire month of June was cold and after so many weeks of rain and cool weather we were desperate to get the boat dried out so we were happy to raft up to another boat (which we found out later was the boat of the guy who warned us off the public docks in Tofino!) on a dock so we could plug in and set out our dehumidifier. What a relief! After weeks of damp everything we were finally able to dry out.

It rained through our first day in Ucluelet which gave me a chance to get all of our laundry done while Jason and Isaac fixed the heater. They have super funny stories to tell about maneuvering our forty pound hot water tank in the tiny space below the cockpit. As their giggles evolved into laughter they slowly lost strength while the water tank fell, squished Isaac and caused even more laughter. There was some doubt as to whether they'd ever make it out alive.

That night Jason and I went on a date but first we walked over to a wood-fired pizza place and grabbed a pizza for the boys to eat while we were gone. After three months without a date, we treated ourselves to dinner at Norwoods where we both consumed a deliciously prepared piece of fish. As good as it was it couldn't top the uber-delicious halibut braised in butter and white wine over carrots accompanied by a boat-made loaf of rustic bread I had made just a few nights earlier in the boat. I miss that dinner. Sigh. I digress. We had a lovely date and it was so nice to spend some relaxing, uninterrupted time together. When our waitress found out we were from Montana she let us know that the bartender was from Montana and she would send her over. When we met we discovered that we graduated from the same high school in the same year. It was crazy....it really highlighted what small world we live in and given that I had no recollection of her, it confirmed that my memory really does suck.

The following day brought sunshine so we pulled apart the boat. All of our wet clothes came out of the shower and every drippy item was pulled out of the moldy sail locker. The decks were strewn with an explosion of sails and foulies everywhere. I busted out the vinegar and mold killer and set to work wiping away all of the mold we had carefully cultivated over the last soggy month. Though I had been wiping the boys' cabin clean on a weekly basis the wet weather was an inviting climate for mold to quickly grow back. I took this opportunity, with the help of the sunshine and dehumidifier, to at long last conquer all the mold I could find and allow those spots to dry completely before we piled everything back into the boat. While everything dried out in the sunshine we headed into Ucluelet for a yummy lunch at a sweet organic bakery before hiking out to a light house where we had splendid views over the graveyard of the pacific. When we got back we piled all of our now dry things back into our dry boat. I can't tell you how good it felt to once again have a dry, mold-free, clean boat.

The following day brought more heavy rain as we anxiously awaited the arrival of our niece, otherwise known as Emma 2. Emma 2 is another adventurous soul who eagerly jumped at our offer to bring her onto the boat. We knew it wouldn't be easy given that we were circumnavigating Vancouver Island which can make timing tricky and uncertain, but as luck and weather would have it, we made it to Ucluelet before her arrival. We had a plan all laid out for her. She would fly into Victoria airport, take a taxi to the bus station and hop onto a bus that would drive her the five hours to Ucluelet. What could go wrong? Turns out, all it took is one piece of the cog to fail and the rest of the plan collapsed. I received a text from Emma in the morning informing us that her flight out of Boise had been delayed which meant that she would miss her flight out of Seattle which would delay her arrival into Victoria which would cause her to miss the final bus to Ucluelet. Warg. We immediately hopped onto the Internet to try to fix the problem. Our first thought was seaplane. After thorough exploration we determined this was cost prohibitively and timing-wise impossible. Taxi? Also super expensive. Rent a car? Oops...she left her driver's license in Iceland (we told you she was adventurous!) Finally after all options had been explored over the course of the day, as she inched her way ever-closer in our direction, we decided she should stay in a hotel in Victoria and catch the morning bus. I happened to be in an organic grocery when we decided this so I spent a creepy amount of time in the tiny nook-and-cranny store booking a hotel for her. The cashier kept checking on me in the back to make sure I wasn't looting him...perhaps he sensed my saltiness and thought I was a savvy cyber-pirate since my nose was buried in my phone making the hotel reservation? I did spend an excessive amount of time there so I can understand his concern.

With a final plan laid out I slogged through the pouring rain to find the restaurant where the boys were eating so we could head back to the boat. We got back to the boat about a half an hour before Emma's plane was to land in Victoria when Jason heard back from a person he had left a message with earlier in the day. His name was Keith and he was a tour guide for cruise ship passengers and he was up for the adventure of picking Emma up at the airport and driving her to Ucluelet. I quickly texted Emma letting her know plans had changed, yet again, and Keith who would be picking her up. He could be recognized because he was wearing a purple shirt that says Kiki Shuffle. My response to this was "What?!? Seriously. Kiki Shuffle? Who is this guy?" Turns out he gets wonderful reviews on Yelp and he was for real. At this point I will start to call Keith, Super Keith. Super Keith dropped off his grandchild he was babysitting, hopped into his van and sped away to the airport. When he arrived he couldn't find Emma anywhere. At this point I had received a text from her that her bag had been lost. So Super Keith wandered through the airport with me on the phone trying to locate Emma. Emma was still behind customs so it took a while. Meanwhile poor Emma was cycling between the Delta and Alaska Air desks trying to locate her bag. On our end we realized that if she left the airport without her bag she wouldn't see it again until we dropped her back at the airport in nine days. Luckily Emma and I are roughly the same size so I suggested she could borrow clothes from me and we could buy her some undies when she got to Ucluelet. Emma was just about to accept this as her fate when her bag miraculously appeared on the next flight. At long last a worried Super Keith and Emma met in the airport and after showing her all kinds of official documentation as proof of being a tour guide they hopped into his van and away they sped. During her five hour drive we were lucky enough to spend time visiting with another couple I had met while I was doing laundry way back in Port McNeill. At long last our paths had crossed again so we spent a lovely evening aboard their Valiant 42 sharing stories of adventures circumnavigating Vancouver Island. After leaving her home in Boise at 7am, being put through the air-travel wringer, Emma finally arrived in Ucluelet at 9pm still smiling where we welcomed her with open arms. Welcome to the boat Emma! Thank you Super Keith of Kiki Shuffle for coming to the rescue and delivering Emma safe and sound!

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Effingham Bay

I miss heat. And being dry. We spent three rainy, shivery nights in Effingham Bay. With weather like this I really miss having a heater. When the rain sets in everything is wet. My feet are always wet. And cold. At the end of the day we peel off our damp clothes, put on our damp jammies, and climb into our damp beds under our damp bedding.

Actually our early morning sail from Tofino to Barkley Sound was gorgeous. We arrived in Effingham Bay early enough that we were the second boat in the anchorage. I packed a lunch and we hopped into the kayaks to paddle the couple of miles over to Dicebox Island to check out some sea caves but first we landed on an inviting beach to eat lunch and explore. I found some nodding onions to gather and some yummy thimble berries to munch on. Next we paddled over to the sea caves for a look-see inside.

Back at the boat we soaked up the last bit of nice weather as we watched boat after boat arrive. There was a warning for strong winds so everyone decided that Effingham was the safest and most comfortable place to sit out the storm. A dinghy from a neighboring boat stopped by telling us that they were headed out to fish and asked if we'd like any. Never ones to turn down fish we accepted. A short while later they arrived back and asked us to hand over a bucket. They then proceeded to fill the bucket with five fish! After many thanks Jason decided that we needed to bring the bucket down into the boat to keep them out of the sun since we were about to eat dinner. He set the bucket o' fish on the counter when one of them started flipping. Me, being a recovering vegetarian, had a little freak-out session about this. I don't want to sound ungrateful or unthankful but I was super unhappy because I thought we were getting a bucket o' dead fish, not a bucket o' suffering-slowly-to-death fish. Jason grabbed the bucket and started up the companionway when a fish flipped right out of the bucket and flopped around on all of our shoes at the entrance of our boat :(. At this point he grabbed one of Aaron's sticks and clubbed it to death :(:(:(. This may get me kicked out of the sailing sisterhood but the fish violence made me sad, sad, sad. After dinner Jason headed to the cockpit with iPad in hand to try to fillet his first five ocean fish. Meanwhile the boys and I stayed below, away from the carnage, and played a card game. After an hour or so he was victorious and we slid four quart bags of fresh fish into our fridge. Nicely done.

The next day it down-poured all day so we nestled into the boat along with the dozen other boats that had joined us in the anchorage. We spent the day playing a board game and making chocolate chip cookies.

The following day brought lighter rain so we pulled on all of our foulies and ventured out. We hiked across the island to a lovely beach and a sea cave we had visited last year. The rocks on the way there were slipperier-than-all-get-out but it we made there and back with our lives. On the way through the forest we came across the biggest red huckleberry bush I have ever seen so we stopped to snack on as many of them as we could reach with big smiles on our faces.

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