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!

Amy Flannery and Ken Kurlychek are currently sticking close to home in Bradenton, Florida, and cruising the Gulf coast as they await an end to the pandemic. They hope to return to Newfoundland in summer 2022.

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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.

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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.

The post Cruising Canada’s Great Bear Rainforest appeared first on Cruising World.

The resident artist aboard, my wife, Nancy, paints with oils, which at times creates unusual challenges as we fling and bash Francis B between Georgia’s marshlands, Labrador’s fjords, and the icebergs and mountains of Greenland. The search for the most visual impact often contradicts traditional rules of safety and seamanship, and frequently sets our course as much as the weather and season.

On the western side of the North Atlantic, the North American coastline varies from the low country of the south to the mountainous Maritimes—so our practices (or malpractices) change accordingly with the latitude.

In the long tidal river that cuts far into the west side of Ossabaw Island in Georgia, we drop anchor a few yards from the edge of a marshy plain. I double-check the weather forecast to make sure a veering or backing wind won’t put our Mason 44 ashore when the fast tidal flow slacks and the boat swings. The tide is low, down some 7 feet. Above the Spartina grasses, we can barely see scattered middens of solid ground sprouting palm trunks with their unruly moplike fronds. For a painter, this low-slung coastal wilderness demands a close approach to achieve the most-rewarding effect. The best view is from up on the ­spreaders, so I crank Nancy, armed with a sketchpad and locked safely in a bosun chair, aloft until she calls, “That’s high enough.” She roughly sketches the scene, then calls to come down. It’s February, and up on the spreaders it feels really cold. Just before sundown, I go up the mast to catch the best colors of the day. I take photos of the marsh hues shifting from golden to saturated red; the distant forest a smear of cold blue.

Before the next cold front arrives, we move into a confluence of four creeks where trees will protect us from gusty winds. We have a noisy night of rainsqualls, and in the morning, we row the dinghy, and then pole it, into a thread of water under overhanging branches. Night herons, blue herons and snowy egrets keep a wary eye on us but stay put above; it’s a rare chance for Nancy to sketch these birds at such close quarters.

Totally different birds keep us company as we escape offshore from the first hot days in May. In coastal waters, grand elegant gannets pierce the sea head first, feeding on the way north to their summer haunts. A couple of days later, the southerly wind picks up. We increase our distance from the North Carolina headlands, and the seas grow. Shearwaters arrive, racing over the troughs and crests, their wing tips all but touching the water but never tripping the flyers. From now on, these birds will be around us. True natives of the oceans, they pass us within arm’s length. Nancy’s portfolio of birds on the wing thickens as do my own photo files.

With just two of us aboard, our on-watch/off-watch schedule and all kinds of weather thwart Nancy’s artistic efforts. In rough foaming crests, spray flying, I offer to tie her to the mast so she can experience nature’s powers; just as J.M.W. Turner, the greatest of painters of the sea, had reputedly done. Her response is not really printable. Besides, the most dramatic shorelines are so far ahead we rush northward, weather permitting.

On these passages, a stop in Gloucester, Massachusetts, has become a routine, to provision, refuel and, most importantly, to drop into the North Shore Art Association to see the latest trends.

Nova Scotia flies by if winds cooperate; Bras d’Or Lake and Cape Breton come next. In a fever to reach the rugged mountainous coast of Labrador, only foul contrary weather can stop us on the west coast of Newfoundland.

“Look at this.” I point to Wyatt Harbour. Sheer scarps surround a small basin within the larger bay. A short pass leads in, narrow but manageable until, midway through, we look down. On both sides, rock slides, plainly visible in translucent water, angle down into deeper blue. The channel now is very tight. Inside the basin, we crane our necks up to take the measure of the tremendous wall before us: dry-blood red, amber and bronze browns in folds and shelves, and colossal boulders of igneous rock. It’s a dramatic background to an amphitheater of slightly flatter bedrock across the cove. Our anchorage, a pool of unruffled calm, reflects the mountain hues with even more intensity.

The Labrador ice loosens considerably by the end of June. We wiggle our way into Davis Strait. Having to heave to for 10 hours in rough water is the price of the passage to Greenland. At the beginning of July, our boat lies secure from all but the smallest bits of ice in Fortune Bay, between tremendous inaccessible mountainous buttes on Disko Island and an isthmus of boulders overlooking Disko Bay. Nancy takes her easel to shore and clambers up and down over the rocks, happy to paint on a stable piece of earth.

Icebergs from the glaciers breaking into Disko Bay drift by day and night. They are monumental fortresses of ice. Stately and indestructible though they look, they seem to be alive, their moves unpredictable. Nancy works under a veil of mosquito netting. The black flies are terrible in the calm, sunny weather. She has almost finished a complex oil sketch, when her model whirls around and then capsizes; a two turreted island now a smooth icescape.

We push on northward to Uummannaq and Karrat Fjords. Wrapped in dense fog, we are grateful for the working radar. It paints a great blob not too far off, and we turn towards it in great excitement, straining our eyes to see through ghostly white vapors. All too suddenly the sea under the bow shines green. We’re afloat over a submerged tongue of ice. We are taking stupid chances. The shining wall of pure ice rises abruptly high above.

At about midday, a faint ring of the sun hovers overhead. A slight breeze shakes the steaming curtains of fog, and we begin to motor from berg to berg. Now we see them, then they’re lost. At one point, the fog dissolves into a white cloud that’s in tatters on the bergs’ peaks; next, the whole massive creation vanishes.

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For a few years now, Karrat Fjord has been the focus of Nancy’s quest for the locations that inspired the best works of Rockwell Kent. A small sailboat adventurer in his own right, Kent was one of the great American artists of the early 20th century. The powerful imagery of his 280 wood engravings illustrating the 1930 edition of Melville’s Moby Dick brought this classic of American literature from oblivion back into national attention. The boat on which he arrived in Greenland wrecked, but Kent was smitten with the grand landscapes. He spent three winters on the northwestern coast, nearby or within Karrat Fjord, creating the best of his oils.

Heavy ice floes and mobs of icebergs had stopped us at the fjord before, but finally in 2016, we sit hove-to off Karrat Island. Carpets of crushed ice thicken and are too dense for our fiberglass hull to power through. This ice dampens the underlying swell, and Nancy’s easel on the bow stays straight.

There is no wind, and the sun is low but warm. Occasionally we hear the eerie clinking of ice chunks, then the silence settles down, only to be disturbed now and then by the low boom of an iceberg cracking. Far away drifts a distant odd thump: the bow cannon from a local boat out on a whale hunt.

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Nancy’s ecstatic. Third time’s a charm, as they say. Glaciers flowing into the various arms of Uummannaq Fjord from the Greenland icecap launch convoys of gigantic icebergs. Majestic, beautiful and indifferent to puny humans, they had before barred the route northward. Now, the bergs satisfy the most intense desires for aesthetic gratification. It would take several lifetimes to portray the varied scenery around us, though Nancy keeps at it.

Impenetrable ice cliffs block the entrance to Uummannaq, a small harbor and the only commercial port in these waters. Luckily the ice-free anchorage at the back of Uummannaq Island supplies a front-row view of fleets of bergs in all sizes and shapes as they steam along at a knot or more. The mountains in the background, slashed by gloomy gorges and sunlit ridges, add drama.

Some miles away, on Appat Island, for the price of a scramble up a nearly vertical mountainside, we end up like birds looking down on the ice-choked fjord and across at the tops of other mountains now at eye level. We’ve come with backpacks bulging with paints, brushes and small panels for Nancy, and camera gear for me. In the far distance glows the mainland ice cap. Hours later it takes all my powers of persuasion to get Nancy to begin a return to the boat. It’s slow. Slipping and sliding, we drag panels covered with sticky paint down the mountain. The paintings acquire a texture of genuine Greenland dust.

We crash on the boat after a quick snack. It’s after midnight but you wouldn’t know it. Here in summer, above the Arctic Circle, the sun floats above the horizon 24 hours a day. Here, an artist’s life calls for stamina—it’s hard to close your eyes for fear of missing something.

In August, the sun begins to sink below the horizon. From 0200 until dawn, we levitate southward in a soft bubble of pastels, the sea and sky merging into one, the moon rising over purple mountains. Later, cutting across Baffin Bay to Resolution Island, nights return, though they’re short at first.

Under an overcast gray sky, Resolution stands bleak, a mound of ruthless, worn out rock. But next morning, the sun straining through thick fog brings colors, muted yet rich, and Nancy sets up her easel on the foredeck. Later, we begin cranking up the anchor; we look up at the near shore right into the scrutinizing stare from a massive polar bear. From now on there will be no painting on land; bears prowl the coast for seals, and a human could easily make a substitute meal.

Nancy lays aside her oils as we slowly cruise the Labrador coast south of Resolution Island and on to Saglek Fjord and beyond. This is a country of deep fjords that penetrate far into the Torngat Mountains, which stand some 5,000 feet tall in places. It’s a coast of monumental sharp headlands; their tops are bluffs, similar to the heads of sperm whales, backed by saw-toothed mountains. The shore is a study in black and white and deep grays—pen and ink country.

Northern Labrador is polar-bear territory. Powering outwards from Ikkudliayuk Fjord, we come along a polar bear paddling towards the mainland 12 miles away. Labrador captains report seeing these aquatic animals tens of miles offshore. With most of the ice long gone, we thought there wouldn’t be any polar bears south of Saglek Fjord. Wrong! At anchor some 80 miles south from Saglek, we are in the bunk reading, when we hear scraping on the hull and the boat heels over. A stray chunk of ice caught on the boat, I’m sure.

I jump up to the cockpit and then slide back into the cabin, even faster. “It’s a bear! White bear! Get a flare gun, make noise!” I shout.

nstead Nancy grabs a camera. As I return topside with a foghorn in hand, the bear lets go of the bulwark, its gigantic paws maybe 4 feet from us. The racket we make works. The bear’s eyes, dark, indifferent and cold, meet ours, but the animal begins to swim away, strangely diving under, surfacing, diving, surfacing, paddling farther and farther with help of the slight current. Despite failing light, we notice a good-size cub landing on the rocks, so now we know the bear is a female and probably anxious to get a rest on this handy piece of “ice”—our hull is white after all.

The sunny days north of the Arctic Circle are a distant ­memory. Apart from the sun jabbing down through persistent cloud cover, we don’t see much color until reaching the Finger Islands, where the 3,000-foot red-butte Kaumajet Mountains meet the sea in the middle of the Labrador coast.

The weather worsens with the advancing season. To dodge fierce winds, we sail from one protected anchorage to another. In the middle of Hamilton Inlet, the longest in Labrador, we must stop for several hours at Gannet Islands, to wait for decent weather. Despite the name, there are no gannets here—and no place to anchor either. Wise to the ways of man, Atlantic puffins, razorbills, guillemots and murres have chosen these remote specks of land to breed. From a distance, birds by the thousands rise and fall like clouds of leaves in a tornado. Closer in, these stocky divers and flyers shoot by like bullets, certainly impossible to sketch. To freeze their antics for later reference, we whip up the cameras.

Nancy uses the frequent delays on the way south to finish half-done studies. By the time we reach the west coast of Newfoundland and make it through Cabot Strait to Cape Breton Island, the main bulkhead in the saloon looks like a gallery wall. A rack holds nine more finished-but-still-drying pieces. Touching the painting in progress on the easel is strictly verboten. Getting underway takes time—folding away the easel, stowing delicate pieces in the aft cabin and the fo’c’sle.

In November, in South Carolina, we make our first long stop. The boat transforms into a framing shop. Framing 65 canvases, the result of several trips northward, will take some time, but in two months, Nancy has a solo show on Jekyll Island in Georgia. Jekyll was once a hangout for fabulously rich robber barons—we hope some of those riches remain.

For several seasons, the search for visual inspiration has taken Nancy and Tom Zydler and the Francis B on an artistic exodus to the far north. To see Nancy’s work visit zydler.com or view her paintings on Instagram: nancy_zydler.

The post Painting Canadian Maritime Landscapes Under Sail appeared first on Cruising World.

To an already long list of life’s ­imponderables, an absolutely remarkable week floating about on Ontario’s Rideau Canal brought me to this: Is 5 mph fast or slow?

For the record, I’d not gone to North America’s oldest continually operated waterway and UNESCO World Heritage Site last July in search of an answer to that quandary. In fact, as I drove eight hours northwest from Boston to Le Boat’s newly opened base in Smiths Falls with my wife, Sue, and daughter, Rebecca, I had many more immediate things on my mind: In particular, how much of the 124-mile-long waterway could we see? From Smiths Falls, the largest town on the canal and roughly at its midpoint, should we voyage north toward Ottowa for an urban experience, or south toward the canal’s other end in Kingston for a more rural and wild adventure? And would the rest of our crew — my brother, Dave, his wife, Peggy, and photographer Jon Whittle — arrive in time to help us to provision before checking in and moving aboard a Horizon 3 canal boat the following afternoon?

Here’s the dilemma that came to perplex me, though, as we navigated 100 or so miles across vast lakes, through forests and towns, rolling farmland, and sprawling marshes: Five mph seemed quick in the narrow parts of the waterway, especially when approaching other vessels or the granite block walls at any of the 13 locks we navigated, though I grew more confident by the mile that the vessel’s powerful bow and stern thrusters would keep the boat ding-free. That same speed seemed plodding, though, as we motored into head winds and crossed long open-water portions of the Rideau. And so, with speed and distance both relative, it seemed the only certainty was that at 5 mph, we had all the time in the world to sit back, relax and savor the experience of a very different sort of floating holiday.

The Rideau Canal was built in the aftermath of the War of 1812 to guarantee the British a secure military and commercial supply route to Kingston, on Lake Ontario. British Lieutenant Colonel John By and the Royal Engineers designed and oversaw its construction, which began in 1826. Thousands of Scottish and Irish immigrants came to work on the project, and many stayed on as settlers once it opened in May of 1832. While in name a canal, the Rideau is actually a waterway comprised of predominantly lakes to the south of Smiths Falls, and to the north, the Rideau River, which flows to Ottawa. Just 12 miles of the canal were cut by hand. From Kingston, the Rideau rises 166 feet through nine locks to reach its summit at Upper Rideau Lake. From there it drops 275 feet in elevation to the Ottawa River, through a series of 19 locks. The rise and fall is important, because when navigating, red buoys are kept to the right when headed upstream to the water’s source, the aforementioned Upper Rideau Lake. As a reminder, at Newboro Lock, where the direction of flow reverses, a red-painted flowerpot is to starboard and a green pot is to port when pulling into the lock from the Upper Rideau. At the other end, the colors of the pots are switched as you enter Newboro Lake and start locking down toward Kingston.

Throughout the waterway, the vast majority of the locks are still operated by hand, using the same mechanisms the tenders have used since 1832. Massive wooden doors at either end of the ­chamber are opened and closed by lockkeepers turning stout black metal hand cranks. Similar mechanics control the sluices that let water flow in and out. A minimum depth of 5 feet is maintained throughout the Rideau, which is open from mid-May to mid-October.

We arrived in Smiths Falls on Friday and checked into the Best Western, just down the street from Le Boat’s base in the historic Lockmaster’s House that sits alongside the waterway. There was a full-on summer party underway behind the hotel, with pontoon boats, kayaks, canoes, runabouts and houseboats tied along the shore, and a park full of Harleys, camping trailers, tents and pickups between us and Le Boat’s new docks downtown.

At the Smiths Falls Lock, we watched a small powerboat navigate through. With a rise of 26 feet, it is the tallest single step on the waterway. Inside every lock ­chamber, thick plastic-coated steel cables run top to bottom every few feet. A ­woman at the bow and a man at the stern of the runabout led dock lines around their respective cables to hold the boat in place as lockkeepers opened the sluices and let the water flow out. The modern Smiths Falls Lock replaces three original locks nearby and is unusual because it’s one of the few on the system that operates at the push of a button.

That evening, we dined at Matty O’Shea’s Pub and sampled local delicacies such as smoked meat sandwiches and poutine — cheese curds and gravy over fries — all washed down with Canadian beer. Jon went a step further and tried the Matty’s Burger, a hamburger smothered in jalapeños and peanut butter, an incongruous combo that he deemed delicious.

In the morning, we toured the Rideau Canal Visitors Center, provisioned at the nearby Independent grocery store and paid a visit to the Beer Store, one of a handful of outlet chains permitted to sell spirits in the province of Ontario. Then, with several dock carts worth of supplies, we went off to find our boat.

Purpose-built, the Horizon 3 has a relatively narrow beam to accommodate the often-limited space in the canal’s crowded locks. In place of a toe rail and boot stripe, there are rugged rubber bumpers that run fore and aft with four additional vertical pads on each side, plus one on the stem and another across the stern, completely eliminating the need for fenders.

The boat has a small aft deck, with a sliding glass door that opens into the saloon. Inside to starboard is the galley; to port sits a table that can be converted into a bed. A helm station is to starboard amidships. We never used it during our trip, but it looked useful for cold-weather days. Forward and a step down there are double en suite cabins to either side, and an enormous berth with separate head and shower compartments in the forepeak. Comfortable and bright as the interior was, most of our driving, living and lounging took place on the flybridge, which is set up with a helm station ­forward, and a grill and dining table astern. Le Boat’s Horizon range also includes smaller models for more intimate crews. It took us just minutes to confirm the vessel’s design intent: Party and enjoy.

Still undecided on our itinerary, I asked a lockkeeper where he would go with a week to explore. Why not, he suggested, get a taste of the Rideau River by starting off with a visit to Merrickville, about two hours and three locks north, then return and head south to play in open lakes for a few days. Sounded good to us.

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So after a briefing dockside, and with Le Boat’s handyman Sterling Brown beside me at the helm on the flybridge, Jon and Dave slipped our stern lines and we were off. With a bump of the throttle, the boat crept ahead until we were clear of those sandwiched in on either side. In the open basin adjacent to the lock, we stopped. I tried backing, then gave the joystick a twist and spun a doughnut to get the feel of things. No time like the present, I thought, and pointed the boat into the waiting lock.

As we entered, lockkeepers were on hand to take our lines and I used the thrusters to push us sideways to the wall. Le Boat’s brochure was right: “No experience required.” Behind us the doors closed, Sterling bid us bon voyage and gravity lowered us to the canal below.

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The next two locks were navigated with similar ease, even when we caught up to another crew on a Le Boat and had to tie side-by-side. We reached the third lock, Kilmarnock, well before closing time, as advised. Hours of operation are a ­navigational consideration not to be ­overlooked. Travel on the canal ends abruptly when the keepers go home for the night. As we approached, a highway bridge blocked the entrance. While we watched and waited, a lone lockkeeper leaned against it and single handedly pushed the two-lane span out of the way. Talk about a well-greased operation!

The ride to Merrickville was breathtaking. The river wound through woodlands and rolling farms, past sprawling wetlands with swaying grasses and birds. In places cornfields descended to the water; in others, small camps or houseboats sat nestled in the trees along the shore.

In Merrickville, we took a left fork just ahead of the lock in the center of town and found an open, though tight space at a dock right next to a sign warning we were about to reach the edge of a dam. Yes, my knuckles were just a little white as I grasped the thruster’s joystick to spin us and crab sideways to the pier.

The sun was low in the sky as we set dock lines. Beside us, the town common was filled with people enjoying a fine summer evening. It had been a long day and no one felt like playing chef. Instead, we took a stroll and found dinner at the Goose and Gridiron, an establishment that dates back to the 1850s and where, at the bar, the beer taps sprout from hockey goalie helmets.

Having arrived too late to really see the town, on Sunday, the crew opted to stay put. We had a couple of Le Boat’s bikes aboard, and Sue and I rode a ways out into the country. In town, we visited a few of the many galleries and shops, and then on a whim, crossed the canal and followed a dirt road down to a stretch of rapids that the lock and canal bypass on the north side of town. The road ended at Aylings Boat Yard and Marina, a living wooden boat museum, with all manner of classic cruising lake boats in various stages of repair. Inside a shed, a do-it-yourselfer gave us a tour of his replanking project, a labor of love that was clearly being measured in years. Beside him, a just-refinished 40-something-foot cabin cruiser sat waiting to be launched. It was such a good show, I returned to the boat and got the rest of the crew. We paid a second visit to Aylings, and then followed a path along the river to another yard, Sirens Boatworks, which specializes in restoring old Chris-Crafts and new boat builds. Its owner talked excitedly about the ongoing wood revival on the canal.

Monday we were off the dock early and waiting at the first lock when it opened for business. South of Smiths Falls, the canal at first was much the same: a narrow winding waterway surrounded by forests and marshes. Once through Poonamalie Lock, though, we turned a corner and Lower Rideau Lake lay before us. The breeze was blustery, with gusts into the 20s; combined with the chop, it cut our speed by a half a knot or better. No ­matter, the view was grand and the ­channel across the lake was well marked and easy to follow. We passed the small town of Rideau Ferry, a relatively narrow spot that marks the boundary between Lower Rideau and Big Rideau lakes. The ferry had long since been replaced by a highway bridge, but the name lives on.

Big Rideau is about 20 miles long and three wide, and sprinkled with islands. Cottages dot the shore amid bold granite outcroppings. Our destination was Colonel By Island, where Parks Canada maintains docks and moorings, all nestled in behind several tiny islets, each of which somehow held equally small summer camps. There was one other boat tied up when we arrived and a few kayakers had set up tents on the lawn above. In the evening, with a new moon and clear sky, the Milky Way was spectacular. So much so, Jon headed for solid ground to set up a camera to shoot the night sky.

The wind died completely by morning and the lake was like glass. We attempted a hike inland but were quickly driven back to the boat by voracious mosquitos. After breakfast and a swim, we pushed upwards through the Narrows Lock and into Upper Rideau Lake, the high point of the waterway.

At Newboro Lock, the keepers gave us a friendly reminder about the change in aids to navigation. Separated by a short, narrow stretch of canal, Newboro Lake couldn’t have been more different than the broad and open Rideaus. Here long granite islands run in rows, as though some ancient hand had used fingernails to scrape out the slices of water between them. Across Newboro, the channel became twisted and took us through two much smaller lakes, Clear and Indian, before we arrived at Chaffey’s Lock, our destination for the night. Most of the locks we visited had just a lockkeeper’s house on site, but at Chaffey’s, the shores were lined with small cottages and we spotted a marine repair shop and store. The docks at the lock were busy with several boats already tied up for the day. Here, as at many of our stopovers, curious onlookers asked about our Le Boat and gladly came aboard for a tour of the curious looking craft.

Nearby, we found The Opinicon, a ­recently restored and reopened circa 1870s hotel, a point of pride with the locals and a good place for a cold beer on a warm day. As dark fell and the mosquitos came out to feast, we fled the boat and returned to the resort to test out the skills of its bartenders.

There’s a point in every charter vacation when you realize you’re running out of time. Our “uh-oh” moment came Wednesday morning. Before starting back north to visit Westport, a recommended tourist spot on Upper Rideau Lake, we very much wanted to see Jones Falls, where a man-made dam and four waterway steps have been described as one of the “Wonders of the Rideau.” Though we got an early start and passed through two sets of locks quickly, when we ­arrived at the falls several boats were already circling. We would have to wait at for least two or three lock-throughs, each of which might take a half hour or longer. Adding up the delay plus the hour or so we’d need to look around, we weren’t certain we could make it back though all the locks and still make Westport by evening. Time, then, to retreat.

Westport lies off to the west of the main channel that crosses Upper Rideau Lake and, surrounded by farms, is easy to spot from afar. We arrived midafternoon at the town marina, located on a tiny island connected to shore by a footbridge. A couple of cheerful dockhands showed us to a spot for the night, pointed out the favored ice cream parlor (every Canadian village has one) and suggested that if we wanted to take a walk, we should visit the local winery.

As in any lakeside tourist town on a July afternoon, the downtown was bustling with small shops, restaurants and traffic, but we quickly escaped all that as we followed the highway out into the country. After several days on the boat, we welcomed the couple-mile walk to Scheuermann Vineyard and Winery, which we found up a dirt road that took us past acres of grapes that Allison Scheuermann and her chef husband, Francois, had planted nearly a decade earlier.

After a brief tour, the six of us sat at a long open-air table while Allison introduced assorted bottles of whites and reds. Nearby sat a large stone oven where pizzas are grilled and a recently built awning that shades tables set up for family style dining. The wine was delicious and the views out across the hills were magnificent on this blue-sky afternoon.

At the boat we took a swim to cool off, then sat on the flybridge to watch the sunset and enjoy Peggy’s Thai basil fish dinner. Afterward, we wandered back into town and caught the last set of music at The Cove Country Inn, a nearby restaurant and watering hole.

Since we had to have the boat back at the dock in Smiths Falls early on Saturday, before the locks opened, our options for Thursday were limited. We wanted to be within an easy day’s run on Friday, so after paying $10 to fill our water tanks, the crew voted to head back to Colonel By Island, where the night sky had been so dazzling.

All week, boat traffic on the Rideau had gotten busier. This time approaching the lock at the Narrows, rather than sweeping right through, we found a waiting queue. At By, the docks were full, so we picked up a mooring ball instead. It was a hot afternoon, and the lake water was refreshing. Rebecca perfected her cannonballs from the flybridge, and we tried out the pool noodles she’d bought at a dollar store in Westport. Damselflies and loons entertained us as we cooked a last dinner aboard and watched the sun set. What a life!

Friday, the breeze was at our backs as we cruised north past Rideau Ferry again. With a bit of time to kill, we checked out Beveridges locks at the entrance to the Tay Canal, which leads to Perth, a reportedly lovely town that would have to await another visit. We motored to the center of the lake, killed the engine and drifted while we cooked lunch. Then with afternoon shadows lengthening, we headed back to the base, hit the gas dock and tied up for our last night across the basin from the Le Boat docks, alongside a park in the center of town.

A week on the Rideau had worked its magic. We were rested. We were happy. We’d tried something entirely new on a waterway built nearly 200 years ago. In the end, our 5 mph pace had proven to be pretty near perfect.

Mark Pillsbury is CW’s editor.

The post Canal Cruising, Canadian Style appeared first on Cruising World.

The wind’s blowing 20 across confused seas as a 5-foot swell reminds us Hurricane Chris went by not long ago. It’s a great day for my dad, my nephew and me to sail the Nova Scotia coast. We steer a broad reach at 7 knots, and that takes the sting out of the gusts as we wend through lumpy seas like a skier through moguls. It’s not all good times; the sky’s gone the color of old nickels, and our boat skids awkwardly off every 10th wave. Still, there’s plenty to like for three generations of McCarthys aiming south from Shelburne onward to round Cape Sable for a night on the Bay of Fundy shore.

A set of larger waves slides beneath Nellie, my trusty Beneteau First 42, and one dollop of wave spanks her transom and — splash! — lands in my father’s lap. It’s a pot-full of cold ocean, but on this day, it makes Ted grin. “Rub a dub dub!” he chortles. My nephew Mac responds from the wheel, “Three men in a tub!” and we smile to recognize ourselves in this building sea.

Yes, it’s the three of us aboard this tub, and from my nephew to me to my dad, it’s three perspectives on an ocean experience. You see, the old man’s been remembering the whales he saw 50 years back and the shoals of fish he sailed through when he was young. But Mac says he’s seen mostly jellyfish in his sailing, and rarely a whale. In other words, my crew combines past and future into a crucial ecological present: Ted McCarthy is into his eighth decade afloat, Mac Huffard is getting ready for college with two weeks at sea, and I’m somewhere between the kid my dad took sailing and the skipper my nephew knows.

The Gulf of Maine is changing around us in increments we register over a lifetime but overlook in any single season. Its illustrious fishing history has been on my mind this whole cruise, and sharing the cockpit with family born in 1941 and in 1999 gives me a new appreciation for the slow changes each generation lives through in any ecological community. Cape Sable is just ahead, and it occurs to me we’re rushing along atop the Gulf of Maine as an ecosystem, as a historical context and as a family setting.

The summer goal was pretty simple: first, cruise from Cape Elizabeth, Maine, to Cape Sable across the Gulf of Maine’s celebrated fishing banks; second, visit eastern Nova Scotia; third, get back around Cape Sable and return to Maine on the shorter leg across the Bay of Fundy. The first leg was about 300 miles, with the promise our keel would pass over fish-rich Browns Bank and Jeffreys Bank and other shallows that arc from Cape Cod all the way to the Grand Banks. We weren’t going all the way to Newfoundland — I only had three weeks — but I was excited this little venture would combine marine ecology and family to truly appreciate the Gulf of Maine.

The area from Cape Cod to Nova Scotia is the Gulf of Maine: 70,000 square miles of life as deep as the Empire State Building and as cold as the refrigerator in your kitchen. If someone asks where I’m from, I say “Maine,” but I’d probably do better to say “the Gulf of Maine.” That second answer would emphasize coastline and islands quilted with spruce and known to heron and osprey. The prevailing winds blow from southwest to northeast, from Cape Cod’s glossy tip to the matte-gray breakers off Cape Sable, a journey of 300 miles, if run by sailboats in the Marblehead to Halifax Ocean Race. It’s no surprise these racers encounter a living ocean’s emissaries in that rich expanse of currents and banks. Out there are fin whales, right whales, humpbacks and sharks. Maybe you’ve been, and out there you saw terns, gannets, gulls and storm petrels. Of course, amid these visitors to the surface are hints of deeper play from mackerel, herring, haddock and hake.

Aboard Nellie, the crew accommodates my enthusiasm for the lives and ledges 50 fathoms beneath our deck shoes. My nephew should care that right here in his family’s front yard is one of Earth’s miracles of abundance. Sandy shallows like Browns Bank separate the warm Gulf Stream from the cold Gulf of Maine, and tidal streams mingle nutrients that power spectacular plankton blooms, feeding the herring that feed the cod that bring the tuna and swordfish and sharks and whales. But when you’re 19, ecological history seems less important than the social present. Nevertheless, on this family cruise I try to impress that we follow enterprising fishermen who knew these banks before there was a United States or a diesel engine.

A mile ahead of us, a white hull steams east below whirling radar domes and scything antennas. I say, “Imagine it’s 1575. You’re sailing here from Cornwall or Brittany with a simple compass and a couple of prayers. Those people were adventurous.” The crew nods, wary of my enthusiasm for the historical. Today’s fishermen have my respect too, and in a sense, the fishing is the story. The fishing brought Europeans in their shallops and pinnaces, and even the longboats of Leif Erikson back in the year 1000. Erikson, they say, settled Vinland (what’s now Newfoundland), and on the foggy rollers off Matinicus you can imagine the squeal of those oars.

If wanderlust brought the Norsemen, cod brought Portuguese, French and English fishermen. Those were in the Cabot, Hudson and de Champlain days; fat-bottomed fishing boats rollicked in Maine harbors before Jamestown or Plymouth Plantation even existed. On the Isles of Shoals, at Popham Beach, up on Monhegan, men who might have drunk with Shakespeare and fired on the Spanish Armada dried their fish on New World racks, pulled their nets near Wabanaki families and, each autumn, packed their holds to sail protein back to a hungry Europe.

But where are the fish these earlier generations applauded? I’m listening through the hull to hear the Gulf of Maine’s gentle testimony — there’s a cautionary tale unfolding. Sailing from Cape Elizabeth to Cape Sable buys you a front-row seat to contemplate the plenty this gulf once held, and a view of what loss looks like at the ecosystem level. The marine life I encountered today — gannets, guillemots and terns in the air, a whale at some distance, a shoal of bluefish to port shepherded by five gulls — is a fraction of the vibrant communities that once interacted here. Early visitors left clear written records of their days. In 1602, John Brereton described: “Whales and Seales in great abundance … Tunneys, Anchoves, Bonits, Salmons, Lobsters, Oisters having Pearle, and infinite other sorts of fish, which are more plentifull upon those coasts of America, than in any other part of the known world.”

“More plentifull,” indeed. A dozen generations back, our ancestors reported walruses off Nova Scotia, beluga whales all the way to Boston, great auk in the thousands, salmon runs to push a rowboat upriver, right whales aplenty and, above all, the majesty of cod.

Looking out for fishing boats, I tell Mac it was the limitless regenerative power of cod that bankrolled early America. Cod are the perfect inhabitants for these perfect waters, feeding on the sand lance and capelin and other tiny denizens of the shallow banks nearby. Around 1740, rich men in the Massachusetts State House hung a wooden codfish above their chamber to remind themselves where wealth comes from. They called it “the sacred cod”! Today, you can barely find a codfish. By some estimates the Gulf of Maine holds only one-third of 1 percent of the cod here when the Mayflower came ashore.

My dad says he remembers boats going out of Boston and cod as cheap fish for Friday nights.

Mac says, “I’ve never seen a codfish.”

I think that if each generation normalizes the conditions it inhabits it can only presume the ecology it encounters to be “natural.” We’re trapped in a limited perspective, like boats in the fog. Maybe sailing is a useful antidote because so many of us learn to sail in family groups, and sharing a cockpit with your family’s youngest and oldest is also sharing the long view on ocean health.

Four hundred years along, Gulf of Maine cod teeter on the edge of endangered status. Industrial fishing in these waters pulled so many fish so fast that even the cod could not reproduce quickly enough to sustain their dizzying numbers. Endless supply was the assumption and endless resilience was the expectation as vigorous trawling of undersea banks like Jeffreys Ledge and Cashes Ledge dug and gouged the seafloor into a mucky morass. Powerful mechanized fleets were deployed from the 1920s on. “The combined force of decades of fishing by domestic and foreign trawl fishers stripped the bottom of life, and rearranged the very foundation of the gulf,” writes marine biologist Callum Roberts. “Trawling had become a geologic force.”

When I was a kid, more powerful fishing boats from Portland to Gloucester followed the cod offshore where they mated and shoaled, and there collected the oldest, healthiest fish in that vulnerable moment. We thought it was business as usual back in the 1970s, but factory fishing swept up the last best hope, and left us with a stunted ecosystem. I recall catching codfish on a jig off the New Meadows River, in Maine, in the mid-’70s, at a time when ecologists were warning of a collapse and the fishing industry scoffed and brought more technology to bear. That last cod I caught was green black, goggle-eyed, held firmly at the jaw by my big hook. I saw only a personal success in those fins and smells, a good fish I’d caught with my hands, and not the last twitch of a receding era.

In Nova Scotia, we tied up to fishing docks and I chatted with amiable, welcoming fishermen. They’ve adjusted their practices since the 1992 moratorium on cod fishing. “I’m mostly for the haddock when I can, and the lobsters all winter,” said one skipper in West Head. Another fisherman told me of the sustainable tuna industry off Cape Sable, where men fish hook-and-line for bluefin tuna in an enterprise free of bycatch and destruction. They all work hard to satisfy the appetite for fish ashore, and deserve our consideration.

Across the border, Maine fishermen suffered a record-low cod catch in 2015 (about 250,000 pounds), and promptly had a worse year in 2016 (170,000 pounds). The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration tells us the spawning population in the Gulf of Maine has never been smaller — and the overall decline since 2005 has been 80 percent. That is 80 percent from already rotten, overfished, habitat-debased 2005, not my heyday, shiny-jigging 1975, much less a robust base line such as 1575. For someone born in 1999, these fisheries seem normal; to my dad, they seem sadly depleted. I deduce that our influence unfolds at such a slow pace that profound environmental changes surprise us all — like watching the clock’s hour hand, you know it’s moving but you just can’t see it.

Another steady-slow cause of environmental harm is our hotter climate. The Gulf of Maine is warming faster than just about any body of water on the planet. This warming means big changes to the ecosystem. A retired fisheries officer I interviewed said ocean warming is a threat to Nova Scotia: “You can blame Exxon or you can call it God’s wrath, but the fact is cold-water fish are going elsewhere, or not surviving.”

The cod, halibut and even lobsters are sensitive to temperature, and as the Gulf of Maine warms and as it acidifies, signature species such as lobster struggle. With spray coming aboard and Nellie fighting the helm in a trough, I wonder what this watery place will look like two decades on, when Mac takes his kids to the sea.

But it’s not all bad news. On the sail up here we glided across fishing banks on a calm day, and the flat seas were delightful with life. The cod might be all but gone, yet I saw humpback whales spouting bubbles into the setting sun, white-sided dolphins leaping clear into the air and shearwaters, storm petrels and gannets dancing against blue skies. The Gulf of Maine still thrives, still lives if we will let its residents rebound. The silly “three men in a tub” rhyme ends with the ambiguous line, “and all of them out to sea,” creating uneasiness, a sense of imminent catastrophe. But what if “out to sea” is where you want to be? Then you’re not condemned, you’re lucky to know that watery place in a personal way. That seems closer to the family experience I’m having this brisk day.

To be at sea with a young sailor is to wish for an ecological future healthier than the one I’ve occupied. Maybe with awareness and planning, the story of decline in these waters can change into one of revitalization. Mac turns the wheel and looks to windward; what blows from there is the possibility of a resilient, blooming Gulf of Maine or, sadly, a wholesale unraveling of the ecology under climate warming and aggressive industrial fishing. Which way will we steer? Which way will he steer?

The Gulf of Maine is just the place for cruising sailors to take on these questions because it hosts so much incredible sailing amid so much incredible marine life. Cruisers enjoy a direct view of ocean health, and organizations like Sailors for the Sea and Turn the Tide on Plastic attest to the sailing community’s engagement. You can only hope coming generations will know the thrill of marine creatures riding their bow waves or spouting in the distance.

A flash in the water was a chunk of driftwood. Dad says, “Your grandfather saw leatherback turtles off Cape Ann,” and I think of the creatures once neighbors and now merely memories. And here we are, three generations who care about the ocean, and each of us with our own ocean in mind. Soon we’ll drop a reef in the mainsail and send Mac forward to secure the tack, to tighten the clew, to motion from the mast while my father steers us into the wind and I crank the halyard snug. A metaphor? Sure, a metaphor of people working together for the well-being of the ship, a symbol of active cooperation guaranteeing sustainability for the craft that floats them.

Jeffrey McCarthy is director of the environmental humanities graduate program at the University of Utah.

The post Changes on the Gulf of Maine appeared first on Cruising World.

For three days in the fall of 1834, dense fog made it impossible to shoot the sun at midday. The navigator of the ship Margaret, bound for Canada from Europe, deduced by dead reckoning that they’d passed Cape Race on Newfoundland. Three hundred nervous immigrants from Ireland were surely ready to put the infamous Cabot Strait behind them. Running fast before a strong southeasterly, Margaret was closing fast on the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

And then: disaster.

Just a day later, Margaret slammed into the cliffs of St. Paul Island, 14 miles north of Cape North on Cape Breton Island. Miraculously, all of the passengers and crew made it ashore alive. The four vessels that wrecked on St. Paul a year later weren’t as lucky. Not a single person survived.

John Cabot gave St. Paul its name in 1497; the first Europeans settled on nearby Cape Breton a couple of centuries later. By 1837, due to the increasing number of shipwrecks, lighthouses were erected on each end of St. Paul and a lifesaving station was established. On foggy days, the lighthouse keepers fired cannons to ward off approaching ships. Even so, hundreds of vessels piled into St. Paul. Today, scuba divers have collected centuries’ worth of wreckage.

On our annual trips northward to Labrador and Greenland, when running fast before a summer southwesterly on our Mason 44, Frances B, St. Paul slipped by as a ghostly shadow. Later, heading south with an autumn norther, it rimmed the horizon as a clear-cut blue shadow. Always, rough conditions ruled out any close inspection.

Finally, in 2017, the weather slumbered, the ocean flattened in a rare spell of calm and the chance to visit this elusive island presented itself. Densely forested hills, almost 500 feet high, with trees that were battered by winter storms into twisted copses of ancient gnomes, dropped down to a shore of steep cliffs. Passing headland after headland, each named after a wrecked ship, Frances B slipped into Atlantic Cove. A hulk of a house among trees on a gentle slope sagged toward earth, its broken windows looking like a skull’s hollow sockets. Another fallen heap of planks teetered on the edge of a cliff. This bay on the east shore, protected from the westerly swells, was in the 19th and early 20th century the main hub of activity, with an administration center housing lifesaving equipment and a Marconi telegraph station. A stretch of sharp, vertiginous cliffs must have presented as much a challenge to visitors then as they do now.

About a mile north, in Martin Powers Cove, Nancy circled the boat between rocky walls as I took the dinghy in to examine the shoreline. As I stepped ashore onto a blanket-size piece of sand, I realized I was probably trespassing; landing on the island requires an official permit from the Canadian coast guard. Wild, multicolored rock stacks stood sentinel around me. We couldn’t legally anchor here either. Anyhow, it was risky business, too close to the rocks, and who knew what wreckage was waiting to swallow our anchor.

Back on board, at the back of the cove we saw a saddle of lowland, an isthmus of sorts, to the west shore. We continued on, and it didn’t take us long to circumnavigate this 3-mile-long island. A lighthouse stood on its northern tip, actually a rocky islet separated from the main island by a narrow cut, called Tickle on the charts but “Tittle” by Cape Bretonians. On the western shore, not far from the end of St. Paul, we came to Trinity Cove, where a reddish-sand beach might serve to land a dinghy if not for the pronounced swell.

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Likewise, the high shore looked manageable to reach a small plateau, empty of any traces of a once busy lobster cannery. A small stream trickled down to the beach, obviously from one of the lakes midisland (their waters, according to reports, devoid of fish). No mammals occur here either. We expected to see many birds, but there were none except for one bald eagle and a few herring gulls — it’s no wonder that many shipwrecked survivors starved to death before anyone from the mainland could reach them across the rough open sea or, in cold months, through the broken, jumbled ice.

Our next visit was the Magdalen Islands, or rather, les Îles de la Madeleine (after all, this is Quebec). Before the days of radar, they must have made an even more formidable barrier in the Gulf of St. Lawrence than they do now. The group stretches right across the gulf westward for some 30 nautical miles — and more if you count the northern rocky outliers, Île Brion and Rochers aux Oiseaux, or le Corps Mort (!) off the southwest end. The entire skinny archipelago is shaped like a gigantic boomerang sandbar of red sandstone, and for centuries has been a trap to any vessel somewhat off course. Timber from wrecks survives in some of the oldest houses, and in at least one church. The dune-shaped heights on the main islands surround extremely shallow lagoons that are favorites with windsurfers skittering in high winds over tiny wavelets, some with water only inches deep. The lagoons also support mussel aquaculture.

Deep water near Île d’Entrée, off the group’s southern end, allowed close inspection of the cliffy shore that has eroded into bridges, arches and buttresses. Erosion has also silted a small manmade harbor that was off limits to Frances B‘s 7-foot draft. The northern shore, exposed to winter storms, rose in razor-sharp ridges and cathedral peaks. The swelling mounds of green midisland hills have great trails, and we waved to hikers high above.

Ashore in Cap-aux-Meules, at a restaurant called les Pas Perdus, we went through a bucket of mussels, steamed straight from the sea, the best of any we tried in the Canadian Maritimes. The Cap-aux-Meules harbor, with its high breakwaters, receives all the ferries and other shipping into the islands. The adjacent marina was chock-full of boats — a major change from a previous, memorable visit. Back in 2001, on 9/11, I was interviewing Camil, the owner and manager of the boatbuilder Entreprises Leo LeBlanc & Fils, for a magazine article, when his sister Suzanne burst in with the shattering news of the twin towers.

We thought the sandstone of the Magdalens quite red, but on our landfall off the East Point of Prince Edward Island, the low sunrise painted the cliffs almost purple. It took only a short sail to reach the port of Souris, which was humming with activity, with large ferries coming and going next to a marina filled with sailboats. In 1997, an 8-mile-long bridge was built that crossed the Northumberland Strait from New Brunswick and launched Prince Edward Island, previously known for lobsters and the best potatoes, into the mainstream of summer tourism. On the east coast, once-remote inlets such as Montague River now house busy marinas, but fortunately, Georgetown, at the river’s entrance, retains the charms of a small town with long maritime traditions. On the more populated south coast, Charlottetown, the capital of this insular province, was thick with summer visitors laying siege to the delightful restaurants in Victoria Row. Off the waterfront in Hillsborough Bay, an afternoon yacht race was in full swing.

The air warmed up and the clammy fogs of the North Atlantic disappeared as Frances B headed north through Northumberland Strait toward Île Bonaventure. A nearby rocky heap, about a mile across and 250 feet high — hard to land on and even harder to scale — sounds like an odd cruising destination, but seabirds love it. Slowly, the island gained mass in the purple dawn light, and large birds levitated silently around us like ghosts — gannets looking for shoals of fish to feed their young. The sun appeared slowly, and the birds divebombed, piercing the sea, after prey. At first, the precipitous shores looked covered with patches of snow — but closer in, we realized we were looking at row upon row of kittiwakes settled on guano-pasted rock ledges. A flat slope well above was overrun by mobs of gannets, between 60,000 and 70,000 of them. To really experience the busy scene, we opted for a ride in a tourist boat from the mainland, about a mile away.

Calm weather was welcome because the anchorage off the village of Percé is quite open to any winds from south to northeast. The clear water revealed boulders dotted among the bottom seaweed, certainly calling for a tripping line on the anchor. At the bird refuge, we leaned on a railing an arm’s length from the immaculately white, elegant gannets, their faces and brilliant eyes pure art nouveau. We watched birds grooming each other affectionately, now and then stretching skyward as if beseeching the gods for healthy offspring. The pairs took turns shading their chicks, awkward with oversize feet and beaks, shedding fluff and snoozing between bouts of feeding. In a few months, these babes, after surviving their first takeoffs from the cliffs, would show up in our home waters in Georgia. The deafening din of thousands of birds calling and the powerful smell finally forced us into retreat. Back on the mainland, from the trail up Mont Ste. Anne, we looked on the cliff-lined shores and scalloped beaches as people the size of ants hopped on the rocky low-tide causeway toward Percé Rock, with its signature arch. In 2003, this rock appeared on the cover of Cruising World, with our previous boat sailing toward it.

Canso Strait, at the eastern tip of Nova Scotia, separates Cape Breton Island from the mainland. In 1955, the construction of a causeway with a lock tamed the fierce currents in the narrows of that passage. Working the fluky offshore westerlies, Frances B made a smooth passage south to the Canso Lock. A day later, we easily negotiated St. Peters Lock, the gate to the heart of Cape Breton Island: Bras d’Or Lake, an inner sea with fabulous summer cruising.

Baddeck, a town on the lake’s northern section, has most everything a cruising sailor might need or desire. The place, with a background of hills and mountains, once charmed Alexander Graham Bell enough for him to settle there. His experiments with hydrofoils must have brought more excitement here at the dawn of the 20th century than one can ever hope to see now. In 1917, he commissioned a 55-foot yawl for his daughter and her husband, Gilbert Grosvenor, the editor of National Geographic, a publication also inspired by Bell. On that yawl, Elsie, Bell presided at a meeting that led to the founding of the influential Cruising Club of America. The inventor’s spirit lingers in the area. From our anchorage between the wharf and Kidston Island, across the outer wide channel, in a forest grove high above the sea, looms Beinn Bhreagh, the Bell family mansion.

Wherever you roam, you needn’t travel far to find scenes of incredible natural beauty in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. For example, take the miles of sandy beaches and dunes at the Prince Edward Island National Park.

Bras d’Or Lake enjoys gentle weather with good summer sailing breezes. Fog, such a pest offshore, rarely occurs here. A plethora of protected, almost landlocked anchorages takes the worry of occasional tropical-storm winds off of one’s mind. Little Harbour on the Malagawatch Peninsula is a good example. A skinny thread of deep water led us into a bay bordered by forests. A massive log cabin, somewhat Alpine in character, overlooked the shore: Cape Breton Smokehouse, a lodge with a popular restaurant. Some years ago, the owners sailed into this bay after leaving Germany for a circumnavigation and fell in love with this land of forests, mountains and villages of people who keep up with their Scotch Celtic roots. In Maskell’s Harbour, not far from Baddeck, Frances B shared the anchorage with a flock of brown ducks busily nibbling underwater grasses.

Although the tides in this inner sea measure in inches, the currents in the narrow north exit from Bras d’Or into Cabot Strait can run ferociously either way. To time our passage just right, we spent the night in Big Harbour, a tight inlet snaking into the hillsides. No other boats disturbed the pool of deeper water under its bluff of white gypsum. Suddenly, silently, a bald eagle plummeted from above, feet first, and then rose toward the treetops with a fish in his talons. Minute wavelets, the only evidence of the morning drama, spread out and rippled the mirror of calm water around the boat.

On the Cape Breton coast facing Cabot Strait, two harbors provide often welcome shelter. Though quite spacious, Ingonish feels tiny in the shadows of the mountains around it, which are part of the Cape Breton Highlands. Farther north, the working fishing harbor of Dingwall, backed by a tremendous dark wall of mountains, looks right into the strait. On a stroll in the outskirts south of the town, we bumped into a small lighthouse of riveted iron panels. It once stood on the south tip of St. Paul Island, read the plaque. Near it, in the gray shingle house of the St. Paul Island Museum, we heard from the descendants of the lighthouse keepers intimate accounts of their lives spent on that lonely outpost. Our cruise of the Gulf of St. Lawrence had begun at St. Paul Island. This, it seemed, was a fitting place to conclude it.

Tom and Nancy Zydler have been frequent contributors to Cruising World for over two decades. Last summer, they completed a clockwise circumnavigation of Newfoundland, “chasing seabirds” before heading south “to our usual haunts in Georgia.”

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If someone had told me that less than 1,000 miles from the well-traveled waters of New England lay an enchanted island of breathtaking beauty, teeming with wildlife, carpeted in edible berries, inhabited by the most generous people on Earth, and absolutely riddled with harbors, bays, inlets and anchorages, I probably wouldn’t have believed it. If they had added that, in spite of these charms, you could sail there all summer and barely see another cruising boat, I also wouldn’t have believed it. Any of it. I would have chalked it up to the superlatives that sailors commonly use for their own favorite or most frequented cruising grounds — in some cases their only cruising grounds. We’ve sailed to lots of people’s favorite places — and have some of our own — but never found one that was head and shoulders better than all the rest. That is, until we accidentally wound up cruising in the one I’ve just described —which we’d barely even heard of.

We hadn’t actually meant to explore Newfoundland at all. It was only to be a stopover on our bigger plan to cross the Atlantic Ocean to Ireland. But plans, as they often do, fall apart and get changed, and early in 2013 we found ourselves in a deep bay on the southeast corner of Newfoundland with a whole summer before us. We had a choice: go back to St. Pierre and Miquelon, from where we’d sailed several days before, and then back to Cape Breton Island and the Nova Scotia coast; or sail around Newfoundland counterclockwise and see what it had to offer. Since my wife, Danielle, hated turning back, we needed a consolation prize after having to abandon our long-cherished transatlantic ambitions. So we decided to press on northward, and were rewarded by the discovery of an amazing cruising ground that exceeded all superlatives, staggered the imagination and left us breathless at nearly every turn.

Around the corner of the island at Cape Race, the coast is indented by a series of deep fjords whose cliffs are alive with nesting seabirds: puffins, terns and gannets mostly, but it’s not unusual to see a bald eagle or two winging majestically by or sitting stately in a lofty pine. The Avalon Peninsula ports, Fermeuse, Aquaforte and Cape Broyle, provide shelter for boats waiting to round notorious Cape Race, or relief for those who just have. The Labrador Current, traveling south along the Atlantic shore of the island, mixes with the warm, fog-generating waters of the Gulf Stream just there, adding an extra measure of intrigue to an already formidable cape.

In spite of the offshore breezes that accelerate to astonishing force as they funnel down the narrow fjords, we found these harbors a very pleasant introduction to island life and what we could look forward to ahead. Sitting out some weather in Cape Broyle (we needn’t have bothered — the endless wind was local, and it was not blowing at all out at sea) we discovered one of the many pleasant aspects of Newfoundland cruising. “That’s a bit of a piece to row ashore from your boat,” several locals observed in their charming Irish-like accent. “Why don’t ye tie up to yonder public wharf?” “We don’t want to take anyone’s spot without permission,” we protested.

“Bless you, that’s not no one’s spot. If there’s room, you ties up, and it’s your spot.”

We were still wary. “For how long?”

“As long as you wants!” they laughed. “It’s a public wharf.”

It proved true, and we realized as time went by that you could almost cruise Newfoundland without a dinghy — or “go-ashore boat” as they call it. Nearly every harbor has a public wharf, and the highest we ever paid was $10 per night. Mostly we paid nothing, and in some places it seemed that the harbormaster intentionally avoided us so as not to have to charge a fee at all. It’s just the sort of people they are. By the time we were at Savage Cove, our last port of call on the island, we had tied wharfside in exactly half the harbors we’d visited, and had to pay in less than half of those.

Though we’d been warned of icebergs along this stretch, we saw none as we sailed toward the capital city, St. John’s. What we did see, mostly while crossing the wildlife sanctuary of Witless Bay, were whales, pods and pods of them, as well as birds innumerable. The children sat in the sun on the foredeck and laughed whenever a startled puffin took off at a right angle to the boat, his stubby legs pounding the water comically until his wings caught up.

In contrast to the sleepy fishing towns that we mostly explored on our cruise, St. John’s is a busy, bustling metropolis. It’s a great place to stock up before heading into more remote parts, especially because you can barely go ashore from the wharves reserved for transients without some outgoing local offering you a ride. Costco, Walmart, Best Buy, ship chandleries, gas, propane, laundry — all the benefits of a big city, with a friendly lift to anywhere you need to go. For those who’ve been cooped up aboard too long, there’s a narrow walking trail along the steep cliffs that guard the harbor entrance, past gun placements from 1812 and World War II, up to the historic Cabot Tower, where the first transatlantic wireless message was received in 1901.

We could happily have spent a few weeks exploring the nooks and crannies of that ancient city, and watching the giant oil-rig tenders, container ships, cruise ships and fishing vessels that come and go day and night without stop, but there was a lot of coast yet to cruise, and the short summer was getting along — in fact, the only two truly warm days we had that year happened there. The day after we left under double-reefed main to sail past Cape St. Francis and Bay de Verde to the quaintly named port of Old Perlican, we had to put on wool sweaters, which rarely came off for the rest of the summer.

The north coast of Newfoundland is indented by three or four major bays, each supplied generously with harbors and islands. Conception Bay, Trinity Bay, Bonavista Bay and Notre Dame Bay could easily be cruised for a whole season apiece without running out of places to go. Unlike the south coast, it has very little fog, since the prevailing southwest wind dries out while blowing over the land. We had time only to skim the surface, sailing from cape to cape without going deep into each bay. We left each one behind with only regrets that we couldn’t explore it more fully. Who wouldn’t want to go to places with names like Heart’s Content and Heart’s Desire? But we had to be heartlessly selective. As it was, it was on this coast that we discovered what we unanimously agreed to be the most beautiful and serene harbor Ganymede has ever anchored in.

“Welcome to Traytown, Population: Zero,” reads the lonely sign as you enter a narrow gorge on Ireland’s Eye island. Inside the tiny harbor the water was clear as glass, the air was fresh with the scent of pines and a bald eagle stood quietly on a high, mossy rock. Ashore were a few seasonal fishing cabins, and a web of overgrown trails led between patches of wild blueberries, moldering graveyards and the remains of houses long abandoned. It was all so peaceful, so dreamy, it was as though time wasn’t being measured at all.

That’s not to say that other spots were a disappointment — they weren’t — but every place was different from the last, sometimes markedly so. On Fogo Island we encountered pink, rounded rock formations similar to those on the Quebec coast; a day away in Lumsden South there had been a beach to rival many in the Caribbean; just before that at Pork Island it was piney granite cliffs dropping straight into deep green water.

Each change in topography left us wondering how much more variety there could be, and each new place we sailed revealed that Mother Nature still had plenty more up her sleeve. We saw less than 5 percent of what the coastline has to offer, and in that little bit was more of nature’s majestic splendor than we’d seen in the 10,000 miles under the keel since Ganymede first left California in 2009.

What did not change, but that we never tired of, was the goodness of the people of Newfoundland. From our first encounter with a “Newfie” at St. Pierre (who helped our daughter Antigone clean some tiny codfish she caught, and who gave us several jars of home-preserved caribou and clams) to the last one (who gave me a lift to the grocery store in Savage Cove), we found them to be the most universally friendly and giving folk anywhere. In all the other places we’ve sailed there have been people, here and there, who stood out as genuinely, sincerely happy to meet us — to help us if need be, to simply make acquaintance if not, and pass the time of day. But far more often in other places the approach of strangers meant we were going to be begged from, or sold something, or charged some sort of made-up “anchoring fee.” Not in Newfoundland. Here the approach of strangers means only one thing: They want to give you something or see if they can help. One has only to begin walking down the road with fuel jugs in hand, and it would be strange for the first passing car not to pull over and offer a lift.

Often, walking along a road, we were waylaid by someone calling out from his or her porch to invite us up for a bowl of soup or a gam, and folk typically came right down to the boat to see what they could bring. Fresh vegetables from their garden? Charts to the Strait of Belle Isle? Seafood? Blueberry muffins? Use of their washer? All these things and more were poured freely forth in abundance by people so generous by nature that they don’t even think they’re doing good — it’s what’s done every day in Newfoundland.

There are downsides, of course, to this cruising ground — even paradise has its price. The biggest one is the shocking lack of groceries. Though there are grocery stores, per se, which even on a casual cruising schedule can be visited every week or so, they’re not always very well stocked, and the vast majority are the convenience-store sort, with anything remotely fresh becoming quickly rubbery in its small glass hutch. Apart from St. John’s, which as a busy international shipping port has absolutely everything, we saw only two cities with a choice of grocery stores. But even when the selection was decent, the prices were not — it felt strange to pay more per pound for vegetables like broccoli than for pork chops, and to pay more for margarine than we normally do in the States for butter. Some prices placed even staples almost out of reach — milk weighed in at an astronomical $10 a gallon, and we gave up entirely on things like chips and salsa. The locals are so used to everything being canned or frozen that some had never thought to try the rubbery veggies behind the glass, and the major part of all their diets is meat. What places don’t have fresh beef and pork have them in every frozen and preserved state imaginable. You can even buy an entire bucket of pickled beef, or simply fish out as much as you need with a hook from the open tub every store seems to have available.

Even their most abundant and delicious food source, seafood, has suffered from their necessarily insular ways. Whenever we were given a few fillets of codfish or some mackerel, they were attended with cooking directions. “What you does, is you takes pork lard — what we calls ‘fatback’ — and melts it in a pan, and then you fries the fish.”

My answer of “Not me. I aim to drizzle it with olive oil, sprinkle on dill and paprika and bake it in the oven,” invariably met with stares of incomprehension.

“Or you boils it with potatoes,” was usually their second try. Actually not a terrible idea. I had never considered myself a tuber connoisseur, but I can say without reservation that the potatoes in Newfoundland were far and away the finest I’ve ever tasted. Maybe it’s the islanders’ Irish roots, maybe it’s the climate, likely a little of both; but not only were the spuds heavenly, they were the cheapest food going. Even better were freshly dug ones from garden plots that dot the landscape, some of them less than a foot from the high-tide mark.

As the coast takes a sharp right turn to form the Great Northern Peninsula, English place names like Round Harbor and Fortune give way to handles like La Scie, Fleur-de-Lys and Grandois. This upper portion of coast was used in time out of mind by French whalers and cod fishermen whose memory lives in the names they left, though little else remains. Here the distance between settlements is farther, the outposts — villages inaccessible by road — are more remote. Many harbors, even very good ones, remain uninhabited, and the katabatic breezes are even wilder than in the southern fjords.

Near the very tip of the peninsula, at the threshold of the Strait of Belle Isle, the major city of St. Anthony (it boasts two grocery stores), is home to an important regional hospital, and was Wilfred Grenfell’s base of operations for his famous medical work in Labrador. As in the rest of Newfoundland, which is careful to preserve its wonderfully rich history, the past seems to be still in progress. Some of the old Grenfell mission buildings still remain, such as the original hospital and historic churches. From the well-sheltered anchorage you can hear on weekdays an authentic steam whistle still calling workers to begin the day and dismissing them at the end.

The scariest, and potentially hardest, part of sailing around Newfoundland is the Strait of Belle Isle. Since the prevailing weather is from the southwest, most people go around the island clockwise, and if they get too much wind in the Strait, at least it’s from astern. Quite often there is rather a lot of it, plus respectable tidal currents, frequent fog and abundant icebergs, mixed in with shipping of all sorts. We had read stories of, and knew personally, folks who had tacked for days back and forth across the Strait between Newfoundland and Labrador, trying to pass through to the Gulf of St. Lawrence as we needed to. It didn’t help that, in September, sailing season was officially over: The fishermen had mostly packed it in for the year, and there was a tropical storm or two spinning away out in the North Atlantic. We had thought then, sitting out our third gale in 10 days in a small bay at the very northern end of Newfoundland — and not knowing whether we’d get through the Strait or not — that we’d be pretty happy to see the last of Newfoundland. We regretted that unkind thought when as a reward for our patience we got a perfectly quiet day to traverse the Strait, with a following wind, no sign of fog and a fair current that got us through to Savage Cove with hours of daylight to spare.

The next morning we sailed out to cross the Strait to the mainland coast of Quebec. We had arrived in Newfoundland, months before, at Trepassey Bay in the fog, and now as we left, a fog rolled in to hide the island from view. The relatively little we’d seen of Newfoundland had left a deep impression. Nowhere else has nature been so varied, so rich, so exuberantly wild; nowhere else have we felt such a warm connection to the people. They had loved us, simply for being us, for being there. It’s a wonderful feeling, and connected to such a wonderful place, it’s no wonder we were sorry to have to leave.

– – –

The Zartmans are currently living in Bristol, Rhode Island, while making improvements to Ganymede and warming their winter with memories of voyages past.

The post Newfoundland Has it All appeared first on Cruising World.

The first miles of our voyage down the west coast of Vancouver Island began like any other successful passage: cracker crumbs littering the cockpit floor, vomit-stained towels strewn about, green-faced crew retching over the side as waves tossed our little boat around. I asked myself, What the hell are we doing out here, bringing our babies out to sea on a small boat?

Two days earlier, we’d anchored our 38-foot ketch, Wondertime, in the still waters of Bull Harbour, a landlocked bay at Hope Island. Normally, we would have savored this spot, perched at the top of Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada, and stayed for days on end, enjoying the nearby trails and exploring the tide pools with our 2- and 5-year-old daughters. Each day we’d hike to the other side of the island through cool, mossy woods. We’d stumble upon a rocky ocean beach with brilliant-blue waves pounding the shoreline, giants hurled down from the Gulf of Alaska.

But not this time. We were too anxious about the upcoming leg of our trip, rounding notorious Cape Scott and sailing in the Pacific once again, this time with our pint-size crew. When faced with our plans to dip our toes in the Pacific and circumnavigate Vancouver Island counterclockwise, my husband, Michael, and I almost chickened out. We considered keeping to inland British Columbian waters for the remainder of our shakedown cruise, probably the wiser choice given our crew. We nearly passed by what turned out to be the most haunting and wild of places in all our Pacific Ocean wanderings.

In Bull Harbour, we gathered on the pier with a handful of other boat crews also readying to round the cape into the Pacific. We compared plans and notes, and analyzed the weather forecast. All of us had come north via the east coast of Vancouver Island, through the easy, calm inland waters the Pacific Northwest is known for. The west coast of the island is an entirely different animal, and none of us was sure what we were signing up for. Our guidebooks used words like rugged, remote, rock-strewn and bears. We’d all heard the stories about waves driven to boat-swallowing heights due to strong ocean currents ripping around the top of the island. After weeks and months spent moseying up the inside passage, we were now hovering on the edge of the ocean.

The next day’s forecast was perfect: calm in the morning, 10 to 15 knots by midday. It was time to go. But in order to even reach the Pacific from Bull Harbour, we’d have to cross the dreaded Nahwitti Bar. Only 50 feet deep at slack high water, it lies across the channel from Hope Island to Vancouver Island, a final gateway to the open Pacific.

We stowed everything below that might get tossed around in the ocean swells. We tied the jacklines on deck and fitted the girls’ new harnesses. The life raft was strapped to the wheel pedestal in the cockpit. Water, fuel jugs and miscellaneous gear were tied down on the aft deck. As we were tucking the girls in, Michael and I talked with our daughters about what the next day would be like, rocking and rolling in the ocean swells like they’d never felt before. “Like a big powerboat wake?” asked Leah. “Exactly! Except over and over …” We parents harbored a swell of emotions — anxiety, excitement, dread, giddiness. When we went to bed, the boat was as ready as she’d ever be. I woke up at 0400 in a cold sweat and with a pounding heart, imagining huge freak waves overtaking us as we attempted to cross the Nahwitti Bar.

Morning finally came, and we motored away from Bull Harbour in calm, glassy waters under a dreary gray sky. We arrived at the bar just as the flood was ending and motored across it like any other body of water, except for the Pacific swells carrying our little boat up and down, up and down. As we continued along Vancouver Island’s northern coast, the wind remained calm, but the northwest swells were mixing with the westerly ebb, and we bounced around for hours in confused, triangular seas. Not dangerous, just nauseating. The girls stayed in bed too long, and by the time we got them strapped into the cockpit with us they were green.

A few hours later we reached Cape Scott, the northwest tip of Vancouver Island, still motoring in less than 5 knots of wind. When we turned south with the ebbing sea, the motion calmed down as we, the swell and the water were running together. The girls had fallen asleep in the cockpit earlier, snuggled in their blankets, and in the calmer motion Leah woke and exclaimed, “That’s much better!” Holly was soon awake, and they were bouncing around the cockpit, wearing their new offshore harnesses like it was any other day at sea. All was well again on board.

Soon after, we could feel small puffs of wind at our backs, which slowly got stronger until we were sure the promised northwest wind had arrived. We unfurled the genoa to starboard, prevented the main to port and sailed for the next five hours wing on wing. The wind built until little whitecaps appeared all around us, glowing in the blue sea. We’d left the clouds behind and were surrounded by blue sky and sun. Wondertime glided down the waves, rocking slightly back and forth as the swells rolled under us. The rugged shoreline of Vancouver Island slowly passed by to port, and the endless horizon of the Pacific to starboard. It was the perfect magic carpet ride.

We rolled right into Quatsino Sound, the first of the west coast’s five major sounds, past the lighthouse guarding the entrance, and found our first anchorage in North Harbour, tucked just inside. We were the only boat. Just us, mountains covered with giant old-growth trees, water, sky and the satisfaction of our first Pacific passage well made. We slept solidly that night.

The next morning, we launched the dinghy and set out to explore. We puttered a mile farther up the inlet, past ancient trees growing right down to the tide line. Reaching the tiny fishing outpost of Winter Harbour, we tied the dinghy to a floating wooden dock. The town consists of a smattering of small cabins lining the shoreline, connected by a wooden boardwalk. We nearly missed the post office, about the size of a large outhouse. In the town’s small, well-stocked store — the hub of the village — we completed our mission to find ice cream. We sat enjoying our cones on the store’s front porch, underneath a sign written in big, red letters: “Bear Alert!”

“Hey!” a woman’s voice called down from a nearby balcony, a small child clinging to her jeans. “You might want to keep a close eye on your girls. There’s been a black bear wandering around here recently.”

“Oh. Thanks! Sure will,” I responded and went back to wiping ice cream off the girls’ chins. Of course there are bears around here. But still, I was curious: “When was the last one seen?”

“About a half hour ago. Right behind this building here,” she replied. We hustled to finish up those ice creams and marched straight back to our dinghy. If the locals were warning us about bears, then we felt it was best to take heed and move along.

A few days later, we poked our bow out again into the Pacific for another hop down the coast. The northwesterly winds were light, seas calm. We found ourselves motorsailing in the morning, then by noon the wind picked up a bit, so we were able to unfurl the genoa. We drifted around Brooks Peninsula, which sticks out like a middle finger — and acts like one, too, sometimes when the wind and currents are up. But this leg was an easy one: Nobody vomited, I cooked lunch and the girls spent the day building blanket forts in the cockpit.

As we ducked under the mountainous, thickly treed peninsula and neared our destination — the Bunsby Islands tucked underneath — we began to fully comprehend the meaning of “rock-strewn.” The coast is peppered with rocks and reefs. They jut far above the surface of the sea — and lie hidden just beneath it — all marked by crashing, spraying, swirling white water. We were sure glad to drop our hook in Scow Bay, on Big Bunsby Island, after successfully dodging them on the way in.

Our girls were exhausted after another long day’s sail, so we tucked them into bed early. Michael and I sat back in the cockpit, sipping a bit of our favorite wine and watching the sun set over the Brooks mountains. The show was stunning: The last of the day’s sunbeams spilled down over the jagged peaks, through low clouds caught in the treetops. Tucked away between the Pacific Ocean and miles and miles of protected forests, it was absolutely still except for the sound of a bald eagle calling out in the distance.

It was nearly dark when Michael heard another sound on the shoreline just a few boat lengths away. A rustling. We both strained our eyes to see what was making the noise and watched in awe as a huge black shape emerged from the bushes. For the next 15 minutes we watched the enormous bear stroll along the shore, reaching on its hind legs to grab a clearly delicious something off the highest branches and sniffing among the rocks for other morsels.

There are no trails on the Bunsbys, which was just fine by me. We spent hours trolling slowly along in our dinghy, exploring hidden lagoons and nooks, marveling at some of the most amazing rock sculptures we’d ever seen. We gazed into crystal-­clear tide pools teeming with life: hermit crabs, sea stars, fluorescent-­green anemones and small fish, all fighting for room. We explored little pocket beaches, the girls finding favorite seashells and bits of glowing sea glass in the sand. Every now and then we’d spot a sea otter popping its head up out of the water to peek at us, guests in her wilderness.

The main problem with a sail down Vancouver Island’s west coast is not the rocks or the ocean swells, or even the bears. It’s the passing by of countless perfect anchorages, each one with its own unique flavor. You just can’t see them all. There are thousands, and as summer grows long you are forced to pick and choose. With every one we passed by I was filled with a pang of longing, with the desire to turn around and go back to each spot we’d had to miss. But summer was growing late, and we had to keep moving southward. I marked in our guidebook the anchorages I’ll be sure not to miss next time.

After winding our way back out of the forested jewels that are the Bunsbys, we tucked into the village of Kyuquot, in Walters Cove. The Houpsitas First Nation Indian reserve lies on the shore opposite the provincial public pier. The reserve side is a bit more laid back, and we saw kids and dogs running on the shore and hurling themselves into the icy cold water with glee. The side of the bay where we were moored was lined with tidy homes, mostly occupied by European Canadians who have moved way out west from the city of Vancouver to try out a more rugged life.

At the head of the wooden pier where we tied up Wondertime we found the village store, post office and showers. People from both sides of the bay gather there to talk, catch up on the news and greet newcomers such as ourselves and those from a few other boats. We met up with several crews we had last seen in Bull Harbour, all of us far more at ease than we had been then. It had a jovial vibe, and when the rain started — and didn’t let up for two days — we just moved inside to chat.

Besides the drenching rain, I’ll always remember Kyuquot for pie. Michael celebrated his birthday there, and undeterred by the wet conditions outside, we piled on our raincoats, boots and hats. We splashed in the puddles of the muddy trail to the small coffee shop near the entrance to Walters Cove. As the rain poured outside, we drank warm cafe lattes and ate hot apple pie a la mode, the best we’ve ever had, I’m pretty sure.

At Queen Cove in Esperanza Inlet, our next stop down the coast, we watched the full moon rise over dark, untouched hillsides. We had the desolate, still bay all to ourselves for several days. Farther down the coast, in Hot Springs Cove, we followed a boardwalk from the anchorage over a mile to wonderfully steamy hot pools and waterfalls. The wide planks were ornately carved with the names of visiting boats — many familiar ones — that have stopped there over the years. Sailors we knew had started their South Pacific journeys there too.

We sailed through fog so thick we couldn’t see past our bow pulpit (why locals call the last month of summer “Fogust”) and into our last sound, Barkley. There were so many places in Barkley Sound that I’ll remember: Ucluelet for its hardy, friendly fishing folk; Nettle Island for sea lions swimming in phosphorescent water; Effingham Island for feeling like we’d stepped onto the set of Avatar. Quirky Bamfield had a “hotel” for feral cats, a world-class marine center the girls loved and rope swings over rugged, gray beaches. Each nook had its own tempting flavor, leaving us wanting more of Vancouver Island’s wild west coast. It’s the kind of hard-won place that calls you back the moment you leave.

Sara, her husband and their two daughters continued aboard Wondertime to New Zealand, where they currently reside. Sara is a co-author of Voyaging with Kids: A Guide to Family Life Afloat. Follow their adventures at ­svwondertime.com.

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