September Sailing Part 3 (Sep. 21st – Oct. 4)

Traveling north on Vancouver Island’s east coast

I made it to Comox, where I’ve been for about a week now as a result of something that happened while sailing Sep. 26 — if nothing else, skip ahead and read that day!

After finishing my last blog post I sailed very slowly to Portland Island.

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This morning I took Jojo to Portland Island and it was one of my favorite little islands I went for a walk on. Something about the trail felt familiar somehow, like I was back in a home forest in the Columbia Gorge. Other than the ocean views of course. I’d like to go back and see the rest of it.

Eventually I was back at the boat and ready to go sailing again. The wind was very light at first but I gradually made my way toward Salt Spring Island. I wanted to spend a bit more time in Ganges to scope it out as a place I might like to live next.

I spent 2 nights in Ganges, and didn’t document my time there super well. This is a sailing blog more so than a town exploration blog. But here are a few places I went.

I do like Ganges and am still considering living there, if I can figure out a way to do that. It’s not looking easy to find any marina in the whole region where living on my boat would be an option. But they do have a pretty cool website called saltspringexchange.com that’s kind of like an independent FB marketplace or Craigslist, maybe I’ll see something there.

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After a busy morning of chores I was ready to leave at about noon.

I wanted to go a direction that the wind and currents were not going, so I motored all day, enjoying what I knew might be the last full day of sunshine for some time.

Eventually I got to Boat Harbour, a strange little bay with a lot of “no anchoring” buoys that I didn’t recognize as such until the next day and wouldn’t have known how to interpret spatially even if I had. Peaceful night though.

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Ah, here is where my days get a bit more interesting!

Once again I needed to pass through Dodd Narrows to get to Nanaimo. I woke up early and by 6:02 my anchor was up and I was on my way.

I radioed to alert other boaters to my presence at the narrow pass, and got no response, as nobody else was around. I went through with the current this time, about 2 knots of it, which went really smoothly.

I enjoyed a nice sunrise coming into Nanaimo.

I came into the port for about 4 hours. I don’t remember why exactly this was necessary but I did get some coffee at that same Vault cafe I went to with Atli and did some research on my upcoming plans.

I left Nanaimo through Departure Bay this time, past the west side of Saysutshun Island, and headed back out to Georgia Strait.

I heard the coast guard a couple of times on the radio putting out a warning about some zone called “Whiskey Golf”, which was closed for torpedo testing. Listening more closely I noticed that he said it was NW of Nanaimo, and I realized that’s where I was going, and started trying to figure out exactly where this zone was.

A couple of minutes later I was intercepted by a coast guard boat who told me to turn around, since I was heading straight for Whiskey Golf. They were very polite considering I should have known about this beforehand.

The people in charge of the area on the radio are called Winchelsea Control, and here is a picture of Winchelsea Island(s).

For the first time in Georgia Strait, the cloud and haze levels were low enough that I could see some mountains on mainland BC, which added a mysterious vibe. What else is hiding in those clouds over there?

My destination for the night was Northwest Bay, which has a private marina, some kind of log floating operation, and 1 other sailboat the night I was there.

…oh, and at least 200 sea lions. I couldn’t believe how many were hanging out on these logs! With my binoculars I counted 170 individuals, but those were often just the ones on the edge of their big cuddle puddles, so I’m confident saying there were easily 200 and possibly 250+.

As you might expect, 200 sea lions are pretty loud and as a human it’s so interesting to wonder what must be going through their heads when that one especially belligerent sea lion restarts the classic ARP! ARP! ARP! refrain for the 100th time. Then eventually the alpha sea lion or whatever who’s doing the death metal vocals gets fed up and quiets him down with a BBBBLLLEAAAAHHHUUHHHGHGGHHGGG

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Don’t let that simple, straight yellow line deceive you — this was probably the most exhilarating and testing day of sailing I’ve had so far.

First, some more sea lions.

I got underway, keeping my jib stored away, and my mainsail deployed with the reef already put in. I knew it was going to be 15-20kts of wind in the strait for most of the day, increasing in the afternoon, and my destination was 28 nm away, directly downwind of my current position.

So, I’m sailing along for a couple hours, my tillerpilot is holding me straight downwind, the swells are coming from straight behind, I’ve got music going, I’m chilling. Doing a solid 5kts which is close to my top speed, with just the reefed main.

But the wind is only getting stronger, and the swell is only getting bigger. It started at maybe 3 feet, and increased until it was consistently 4′ with some over 5′.

These are maybe close to 4′:

Alright, it’s getting spicier, I’m starting to surf down the front side of the waves at 8-9kts. Actually I’m having a blast, it’s quite fun to go this fast with just one little sail up.

One interesting paradox was that I wasn’t sure which direction to watch. Generally I’d want to look mostly forward in case there is debris in the water, but here I probably spent 95% of my time looking behind the boat. That’s the direction the waves and the wind were both coming from — so if I wanted to know what state my boat was going to be in in a few seconds, the more relevant sensory information came from that direction; basically the future was behind me. That’s something you won’t experience driving a car unless perhaps you’re trying to outrun a tornado.

I usually wear some very mild glasses with a prescription of -0.25 in each eye, which have a strange side effect of messing with my depth perception, making everything look closer to me than it really is. I took off my glasses and noticed that the swell was actually bigger and scarier looking than I thought. It was also around this time that my boat took on a funny angle going down a swell and a rather violent uncontrolled gybe happened. Fortunately I was standing in the cabin, out of the way of the boom, but if I’d been standing somewhere else I could have easily been knocked out.

(One of my lessons from the day was that I shouldn’t think of sailing straight downwind as a safe/easy point of sail, but rather stay 20-30 degrees to the wind and avoid the risk of accidental gybes. For a fuller discussion of my mistakes on this day feel free to check out my reddit post on the subject.)

I decided my tillerpilot shouldn’t be trusted in these big seas, so I put it in standby and assumed control of the tiller.

Shortly after that is when I noticed that something didn’t feel right with my steering. Too much play.

The rudder has 2 pins basically that hang on receptacles on the back of my boat, like hinges. I looked down and noticed that the top pin, which is held on by a steel strap thru-bolted to my rudder, was completely broken on one side, and flexing on the other. Soon, that side fatigued too, so the top pin was disconnected and not functional at all!

Now I was in by far the biggest seas I’ve sailed in, with 20kts of wind, and a rudder that’s connected with just 1 hinge.

Overall the thing I’m most proud of myself for is that I kept my cool and didn’t panic, but tried to just think rationally about what I would need to do to get to safety, and execute that.

My biggest concern was that the remaining pintle/gudgeon combo (yes sailboats even have weird words for hinges) would experience a tremendous amount of tweaking force now that it wasn’t being held in alignment. If that broke I could risk losing my whole rudder. What I could have done is simply remove the rudder and steer with my outboard, but I didn’t think of that. So, I used my right hand, with my elbow wedged against my body, to hold the top of the rudder somewhere close to the alignment where it was supposed to be, and I used my other hand to continue steering the boat.

I knew my destination was about 4nm away, straight downwind, and that there was a somewhat protected bay in front of the marina. So I figured the best thing to do would be to keep riding it out. I had to stay there and forcefully hold the rudder in position the rest of the day, and I got my outboard going so that I’d have another way to control the situation. By now the swells were coming one after another in close succession, a whole landscape of them, and they’re all pretty big and seem to be nearly breaking, like definitely surfable waves. I mostly wanted to avoid taking them beam-on.

Eventually, I made my way into the protection of the bay, where it was still very windy but at least the waves were calm. I noticed that at my new bearing to the wind, my rudder had wedged itself into a stable position so I took the chance to scramble up and take my mainsail down. Then, I just had to dock in an unknown marina in strong winds with a broken rudder by myself! A stressful prospect on a normal day, but compared to feeling so small and helpless out in the strait, I was just relieved to be in relative safety. I found an easy dock and tied to it with no issues.

Inspecting the damage:

I had made it to Deep Bay Marina. This was a strange experience in itself; it was like a ghost marina. There were other boats there, but maybe no other transient boaters, and no liveaboards, because I only saw 1 other person the whole time I was there. There was a gate to exit which warned to call and get permission before leaving. I spent about an hour trying to call the 3 numbers I found, leaving voicemails, with no response… all before simply looking around and noticing that the gate was completely useless.

I went and ate at the one restaurant nearby, not knowing what else to do, and confirmed my suspicion that there were no boat supply stores nearby.

I figured the thing to do was rig up a temporary fix and motor the 16 nm to Comox the next day, when it would be much calmer.

Repair made, Sikaflex curing, I went to bed.

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Really strange… I never heard anything back from the marina where I was staying, or met any of the staff. Apparently, their office sank 2-3 years ago?? Well, I guess I got a free night of moorage and power.

Later on, I realized there was more to the story. There is a resident wharfinger/watchman guy named Doug, whose number is the first you’re supposed to call when you get there. It seemed strange that he wouldn’t pick up but I didn’t think too much of it… until a week later in the marina laundry room in Comox, I noticed this flyer.

In lieu of paying marina fees for that night I donated $25 to his gofundme. You’re welcome to do the same.

The motoring this day was delightfully uneventful and I got to test out all my foul weather gear since this was actually my first day being on the boat where it rained a significant amount.

This one picture pretty well sums up what the travel was like that day.

So I got to Comox on Saturday around noon, and stayed for almost exactly 1 week.

The first day was dry and it felt good to hoist my sails to let the water evaporate, and then get them nicely put away before the rain came back.

There is a boat supply store, but it was closed Sat/Sun so I waited until Monday to see if they had what I needed. Then I found out it was a bit small and even in their catalogues they didn’t have any replacement pintles, so I ended up ordering the part from a different store online and had it mailed there for pickup.

Comox wasn’t a bad place to rest. The marina people were really helpful and friendly. I made a new friend named Christie who I had dinner with a couple times and she also showed me a nice trail system nearby. And I spent multiple days on my boat just vegging out, which, now that I think of it, I haven’t really had many opportunities to do in the last couple years.

The new pintle arrived Friday, and fortunately it was the right size and I was able to get it installed. The old holes didn’t line up, plus I had 2 new holes from my temporary repair, so to patch all those I used a countersink bit to expose more fresh fiberglass, sanded and acetoned the surface, filled them with epoxy that I got from the boat supply store, and leveled them with a plastic blade. I brought the rudder inside the cabin so that my heater would help it cure faster. In the morning it was as simple as bolting the new pintle on through the new holes, and I had some brand new stainless nuts & bolts with me already, which felt good to use.

So, it’s not beautiful but hopefully it’ll be functional for a long time. The new pintle is aluminum which feels a little underwhelming to me but I don’t really see a reason why it won’t work.

So, now it is October 4, I have left Comox Valley Marina, and I am anchored in the bay nearby. My next destination is Campbell River and it’s a solid 30 nm away without much shelter in between, and I didn’t have time to go that far today leaving at noon, so I’m waiting until tomorrow morning to start.

With the rain, gloom, and broken rudder, I was getting a bit discouraged about continuing my trip. But on my 15 day forecast I’m only seeing 1 day with significant rain! And nothing too crazy with the wind, either. Maybe I’ll get to see Desolation Sound after all! The journey continues!

And, because I like to end each blog with my overall GPX track so far: