CATEGORY: SAILING
PHOTO: THE EMPRESS HOTEL AND GUEST DOCK, VICTORIA BC

Bob had always wanted to sail into the Inner Harbor in Victoria, BC.  It was around the south western tip of Vancouver Island, and the rip tides on the way were like real rips in the planet.  The tide and wind were never right when we were in the vicinity.  We would tie up in Sidney, twelve miles north instead, and go by bus into the city, but never for very long.

The Inner Harbor has a small complimentary dock for pleasure boats right in the heart of Victoria across the main street from the Empress Hotel. Off to one side, the Parliament Building sits on a rise above a bounteous lawn. On a corner between them is the Provincial Museum in which one could easily spend a week–maybe even sleeping there without being noticed.  In my imagination, I slyly staked out a territory for myself in a Haida longhouse.

One summer the tide and wind were just right for going around the end of  Vancouver Island and into the Inner Harbor.  What a thrill!  Just pulling up to the Empress makes one feel like a knight in shining armor approaching the Castle of the Third Dawn.  We stayed there for a few days, really seeing the city, having High Tea at the Empress (!), indulging in liqueur chocolates (!) and northern European pastries (!) at the Dutch Bakery (!).  Every day at 5:00 P M a kilt clad Scotsman appeared on the roof of the Empress and played the bagpipes.  The whole experience was a crash course in self indulgence.

Once we had navigated the treacherous end of Vancouver Island, another opportunity was open to us: sailing across the Straight of Juan de Fuca into Port Angeles!  We arrived there about noon.  It was an extremely hot day. On the dock we met a salty old fisherman.  He told us, “Whenever it gets this ‘ere hot, thayre comes up a BLOW!  Yes siree, we’re gonna have a WESTERLY!”–only he pronounced it “wiesterly.”  Bob believed him and didn’t want to linger.  Port Angeles is not much of a town.  Whoever named it “Port of the Angels” was either optimistic or desperate.  It had a Penny’s store and a ferry dock to accommodate ferries to and from Victoria.  The real beauty was sailing into it with the Olympic Mountains so close behind.  They looked like they could erase the town with one casual avalanche.  It was home territory; so with the threat of a WIESTERLY, we started right off again. In no time we would be back in Port Townsend.

No sooner had we started than our fisherman friend’s prediction came true. There came up a “BLOW.”  “Blow” or “Wiestrly,” it was the most frightening experience I have ever had sailing–not that I had ever had a frightening experience sailing.  A sail boat can tack into a fairly heavy wind.  The boat may keel to one side until the rail is almost in the water, but somehow it isn’t frightening.  Going down wind in a “blow” is something else again. The mainsail is on one side and the jib on the other.  It is called “wing and wing.”  

This “blow” started suddenly and hard.  Almost instantly the waves were six feet high, steep and choppy.  It was a real King Lear kind of BLOW, “Blow wind blow and crack your cheeks!!!”  Bob said that he would have to reef the sails. He told me to take the tiller, and “just keep her steady, straight ahead.”

STRAIGHT AHEAD??!!  The danger of sailing down wind, wing and wing, in a heavy wind is that it is impossible to “just keep her steady, straight ahead.”  The wind is not blowing a steady gale; it is gusting, and seemingly, not always from the same direction.  The mainsail can get back winded; the boom can jibe.  That is, the wind can sneak around behind the mainsail and cause the boom to slam around with great force, sweeping everything in its path overboard–usually people.  The waves that day were erratic.  Going up one side of a wave, the boat would swing to the left.  Coming down, it would yaw off to the right at what seemed 90 degrees.   

Bob put on a harness with safety line buckled to the mast and went forward to do the reefing.  I clung to the tiller, practically frozen with fear.  Every time the boat hit a wave the spray would shoot high in the air so it was hard to know which way was “ahead.”  On the way down it would swing so far over, I was petrified the boom would jibe and take our whole little boat with it into a death roll.  I think I aged twenty years in the next half hour.  

Bob finished reefing and came back and took the tiller.  I went below, thinking I was going to be sick–not sea sick but sick with tension.  However it didn’t happen.  Miraculously, after an hour or so, the wind stopped as suddenly as it had begun.  We made it all the way to Protection Island that day, a record mileage–remarkable considering we had gone twice as far as the normal distance what with all the ups and downs.  We could look over and see the back side of Port Townsend.  What a relief to see something that looked like civilization, even if it was the back side of civilization!