40 Boating New Zealand
BELOW Campfire songs in the wilderness.
RIGHT A view from the top.VANCOUVER ISLAND
For more information about Vancouver Island visit http://www.tourismvi.caBridget left to do some other travelling, and Kieran, a shaggy-
haired sailmaker, was her replacement
We set off on the second half of the circumnavigation from
Port Hardy and immediately hit pea soup fog. We were thankful
for our 1980s RADAR as our eyes were useless. Occasionally a
new blip would appear on the screen, and shortly after we would
hear the whine of an invisible fishing boat somewhere nearby.
We had to cross the Nahwitti Bar and round Cape Scott to
get to the next sheltered anchorage. The bar is a shallow gravel
stretch exposed to the open Pacific and, as swell rolls over it,
it’s been known to create enormous waves that at times spit
gravel from the bottom up onto the deck of boats. But when we
crossed, we enjoyed smooth rolling waves, steep but unbreaking.
Sea Otter Cove is flanked by two mountains blanketed in forest
and crowned with a rare sub-alpine bog ecosystem. A smattering
of small islets protects the mouth of the cove and several sea otters
floated happily on their backs in the kelp as we approached.
We made it our base as we explored the area, climbing to the
top of Mt St Patrick, and surfing the deserted beaches nearby.
After a reasonably hectic sail around the Brooks Peninsula
in strong winds and big swell, we found an empty golden sand
beach with a perfect right-handed longboard wave. We spent
the best part of a week here, taking turns on the longboards,
cleaning the beach, and at one point sharing the line-up with a
grey whale who’d come to scrape off some barnacles.
The Vancouver Island chapter of the Surfrider Foundation
had provided us with supersacks, which we were able to fill
easily. The sheer amount of plastic we found was phenomenal- roughly 30 percent plastic bottles, 30 percent commercial
fishing gear, 30 percent polystyrene (apparently from the Japan
tsunami), and 10 percent anything else you could think of.
This included basketballs, ping-pong balls, tyres, an
assortment of shoes and boots, toys, an EPIRB (uh oh),
toothbrushes, shotgun shells, light bulbs, and even a Pump
bottle that had made its way from New Zealand.
In September, a barge cruised up the coast of Vancouver
Island and collected the 140 supersacks filled by groups of
volunteers at remote beaches during the summer. Knowing
that what we found was just a tiny fraction of what is out there
has had a lasting effect, forcing us to critically consider our
own personal consumption, as well as sparking a continuing
conversation about what other positive changes could be made
to try and curb the ocean plastic scourge.
We enjoyed the light winds, clear weather and excellent surf
over the last few weeks of our trip home. After two months
on the boat, we arrived back at Victoria and were immediately
picked up and taken to a party. Feeling totally shell-shocked in a
nightclub, I reflected on what we had seen and learned over the
course of one hell of a trip, and started planning the next one. BNZ