Favorite video this month:

Vancouver Island Circumnavigation Schedule, 2010

Sail Plan:  Van. Isle. Circumnavigation 2010
Sunday	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday
July    25	26	27	28	29	30	31
						Garden Bay
August   1	2	3	4	5	6	7
Cortes_Bay			Broughton Archipelago		Port_Hardy	Bull Harbour
8	9	10	11	12	13	14
Sea Otter Cove		Winter Harbour	Big Bunsby Marine Park	Zeballos	Tahsis Pillage In the Village
15	16	17	18	19	20	21
Friendly Cove		Hot_Springs Cove			Tofino
22	23	24	25	26	27	28
	Broken Islands		Bamfield		Port Renfrew
29	30	31	Sep   1	2	3	4
		Sooke	Victoria	Scott_Point Saltspring	Ruxton Island
5	6	7	8	9	10	11
Ladner
Locations accessible by transit			plane: bus:		ferry: car:

This is the anticipated schedule of arrival days going around Vancouver Island in a counter clockwise direction.  The icons are linked methods for our friends to reach us at the destinations along the way.
Additional details were posted on the March Thunder Blog.

Danger Boy has two black balls

Erin completed the PCOC exam and can now burn around in the boat all by herself!  The PCOC is the Pleasure Craft Operator Card that is required by all recreational boaters in Canada, the US and who knows where else.  I got mine about 10 years ago at the local Boat Show.  There was a booth at the event offering the test for free, so I wrote it and past…  Being that it was multiple guess, if you gave it to a hundred monkeys, presumably one of them would have past it too, so there are probably several monkeys bombing around out there right now.  Writing the test was free but they didn’t tell me that it was $35 to actually get the card.  This particular monkey happened to have the $35 bucks. 

We both just took the Canadian Power Squadron basic Boating Course which you take the PCOC in the middle of the course.  I took the PCOC again because, according to Power Squadron, it is the only Canadian PCOC that is accepted in the US as well; which only matters if you’re in the US for more than six weeks I think it is.  The boating standard you need to conform to when out of your own country is your boat’s country of origin unless you’re in the States for more than six weeks (I could be wrong on the length of time there, so don’t quote me on that, and it varies from country to country.  I think its six weeks for Americans coming into Canada too).

Erin and I haven’t written the final exam for the Power Squadron course yet, we write it on May 11^th.  The exam doesn’t actually get you anything in terms of accreditation other than you can become a member.  Power Squadron courses are not recognized by the Canadian Yachting Association (CYA) which is a member of the International Sailing Federation     I’m not sure why that is, but I imagine it is because Power Squadron is run by volunteers, so it may not be up to the standard when compared to a course being taught by a professional and there is no on the water component which is required by the CYA to be an accredited course.  You need the accreditation if you ever want to charter a bare boat anywhere in the world.  Despite that, it does give you an awareness of a basic level of safety and is quite a bit cheaper (and easier) than taking a CYA approved course.  It’s a good start for someone with zero boating experience. 

The next course we take will probably be the VHF licence course, which is required to operate VHF.  Then we’ll probably take the Basic Cruising course with Cooper Yachting School, which is a CYA accredited week end course, out on the water.

Following that, here is a list of the courses we plan to take over the next few years:

- Power Squadron, (PCOC),

- VHF Licence, (ROC (M)),

- Basic Cruising Standard

- Coastal Navigation Standard

- Intermediate Cruising (Yachting Association Skipper ticket.  Allows you to charter bare boat anywhere)

- HAM Licence

- St. John Ambulance Emergency First Aid Certificate

- Advanced Cruising

- Celestial Navigation

- Engine maintenance (may skip this course)

- Yachtmaster - Ocean

The Yachtmaster is not actually a course.  It’s a credential you achieve after having completed a minimum of 50 days and 2500 nautical miles. Passages specified must be over 60 nautical miles minimum. Applicants not holding the CYA Offshore Cruising Standard must have experience of 100 days and prove that they have earned at least one sparrow tattoo (or the equivalent).

There are of course several other courses that can be taken but you’ll never leave if you plan on taking every course.

If you ever take one of these course exams, remember:  Danger Buoy has two black balls.

First run for the season

Erin & I set off from Captain’s cove around five on Friday for our first trip of the season. We didn’t have a reliably functioning GPS. I over wrote the chart software last year with some UK road map software, so the GPS screen currently has a car driving across the Georgia Strait and not a lot of detail like islands. As a result, when we got across the strait we completely overshot the inlet for Silva Bay in the dark, which is hard to find at the best of times.
Outside Silva Bay there are reefs everywhere, one of them known as Thrasher Rock. Usually reefs are named after the first boat that sinks on them, so presumably there was a boat aptly named Thrasher at one point. Somehow we managed to weave our way through all that in the dark overcast night. Perhaps the gods of the sea thought it might be funny if a reef in the area ended up being called "Carefree Isle". We tied up by 10:30 on Tugboat Island, one of the islands that form Silva Bay.
One of the engines was not running 100% so in the morning I drained some of the water out that had apparently accumulated over the winter and been collected in the diesel filter glass bowl. I guess in doing this I had allowed some air to get in, which typically will stop your diesel engine dead.
The wind picked up on queue, just as we decided to leave and head for Ruxton Island. Needless to say the engine died at the worst possible moment when we were most likely to get blown onto the rocks. This is the second time in a row that we have almost been blown onto these vary same rocks. Fortunately, we’ve got two engines… Just as we seem to have things under control, and are backing out into the wind away from danger on one engine, the second functioning engine over heat alarm starts making it’s ear piercing screech. Turns out it had decided that this would be a good time to suck some seaweed up its cooling water supply orifice. Fortunately the previous owners had put a hand pump on the diesel lines which Erin hopped down to the engine room and got the first temperamental engine going just enough to get us the hell out of there with the second engine turned off in fear that it would overheat.
We made it to Ruxton, through some narrows, on the one engine with the air in the lines and Erin running down to pump the diesel about 300 times. Good thing I didn’t listen to the guy that told me that I should get rid of those pumps.
Got the air bled out of the Port engine and the seaweed out of the Starboard this morning. Had both running without a problem for about six hours coming back across the strait, so the problem appears to have been solved for now.
Weather was great in the gulf islands yesterday. We had some shitty cold wet whether today coming back. Almost looked like it was trying to snow.