The sailing adventures of SV Meriwether and her crew
With just over a week to get to our scheduled haul-out in Port Townsend, we had to keep moving. Though we initially planned to visit Vancouver, we chose to bypass it to spend a couple days in Victoria instead. This route would bring us through BC’s Gulf Islands, on the South East side of Vancouver Island. But first, we had...
We saved our final “big ticket” adventure in Canada for last; Princess Louisa Inlet. It is talked about by anyone that has sailed around the Puget Sound or British Columbia as a must-do location. It is easy enough to see images of it from past visitors and know that it is worth the effort, and an effort it is –...
We didn’t know it at the time we signed on to this new route, but we soon found out that it brought us through the a trifecta of rapids, the first of which we had already passaged. Ahead lie two more – Dent Rapids and Yuculta Rapids – both of which came with dire warnings about timing our arrival at...
Even with us feeling the crunch on time to get to Port Townsend to get a bunch of work done on the boat before heading offshore, we felt the need to take the long way up and around, instead of take the normal – and fast – Johnstone Strait. This didn’t start until a few minutes before leaving Port Harvey,...
We were already on our way south out of the Broughtons after spending a few days within the archipelago, one of which may or may not have included a birthday. It did, in fact, include a rare two-night stay in a single anchorage to catch up on some work and rest, and a visit to an abandoned native village. The...
We were already feeling the crunch. The crunch to make it to Port Townsend by our scheduled haul-out at the end of August. But we had only just arrived in the area that contains endless islands and inlets to explore. Down the entire 300+ mile length of Vancouver Island is a boater’s paradise [in the summer], yet we only had...
It was a drastic change, arriving back into civilization after months of very remote anchorages and the lifestyle of Alaska and the northern part of BC. No one in their right minds would call this a metropolis by any means, but it was to us. Since we did not wish to go into the big-city just yet, our first encounter...
We had a few day wait – thanks to weather – before we could safely round Cape Caution. The Cape is notorious for making mildly foul weather into a supremely big deal, not necessarily for the weather itself but for the state of the water it creates. Nevertheless, a good amount of wind was coming our way for a couple...
Leaving Bella Coola, after a three day rest, we were under no delusion – sailing would not be taking place this day. In fact, we were racing against the clock as the nearest anchorage was 6 hours down-channel, with strong winds that would oppose us by afternoon. Burke Channel is notorious for making life hard on sailors that are traversing...
One might think we would spend the rest of our lives at such an ideal spot as Eucott Hotsprings, but move on we did. We still had Labouchere, a section of Burke, and North Bentick Channels to navigate to the apex of our inland adventures at Bella Coola. It was still a long haul to get there, but the forecast...
