Daily Progress Sailing around Vancouver Island, August 2010

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.

Circumnavigating Vancouver Island:

Sail Plan, July 31^st – September 5^th, 2010

Ok, here is the initial plan, if any folks we know want to join us for part of this journey. If you supply the booze, we’ll supply the cruise.

There can never be any solid plan when boating so this entire time line can pretty much be thrown out the window before we even start. But for those that have the crazy idea that boating will ever be on any kind of schedule, here goes. (These dates are give-or-take about a week. As you will see, the margin of error gets farther and farther apart. I.e. We may get back on August 16^th or September 5^th, who knows.)

Vancouver to Cortes Island July 31^st – August 4^th

- Departing from Ladner probably around Saturday July 31^st

- 2 to 4 nights up the Sunshine Coast stopping overnight at any of the following places: Alexandra Island, Secret Cove / Buccaneer Bay, Garden Bay, Lund, Cortes Bay.

Reaching Cortes between August 2^nd and 4^th.

Cortes Island to Cape Scott August 3^rd – 11^th (somewhere in this range of time)

- 3 to 6 nights from Cortes Island to Cape Scott (north tip of Vancouver Island) stopping overnight through the inside passage at just about anywhere, possibly the following places: Von Donop Inlet Cortes, Octopus Islands Quadra, Broughton Archipelago Marine Provincial Park, God’s Pocket, Bull Harbour

Reaching the north end of Vancouver Island somewhere between August 6^th and 11^th. map

Cape Scott to Cape Cook August 6^th – 15^th

- 1 to 4 nights from Cape Scott to Bunsby Islands (past Cape Cook) stopping overnight on the outside at any of the inlets, possibly the following places: Sea Otter Cove, Winter Harbour Quatsino Sound, Klaskish Inlet, Columbia Cove

Reaching one of the inlets past Cape Cook sometime between August 7^th and 15^th.

Cape Cook to Kyuquot August 7^th – 18^th

- 1 to 3 nights from Bunsby Islands in

to Kyuquot Sound stopping overnight in the sound at various places.

In Kyuquot Sound sometime between August 8^th and 18^th. map

Kyuquot Sound to Nootka Sound August 8^th – 22^nd

- 1 to 4 nights in Esperanza Inlet, through the inside of Nootka Island to Nootka Sound stopping overnight in the sound at various places probably stopping in at Zeballos in Kyuquot and Friendly Cove in Nootka.

Reaching Friendly Cove in Nootka Sound between August 9^th and 22^nd.

Nootka Sound to Tofino August 9^th – 27^th

- 2 to 5 nights in Clayoquot Sound to Tofino stopping overnight in various places probably Hot Springs Cove and through the back side of the various islands to Tough City.

Reaching Tofino between August 11^th and 27^th.

Tofino to Bamfield August 11^th – 31^st

- 2 to 4 nights in Barkley Sound stopping overnight in the sound at possibly: Ucluelet, Turtle Bay, Effingham Bay (with an ancient village) in the Broken Islands, and Bamfield

Reaching Bamfield between August 13^th and 31^st. map

Bamfield to Sooke August 13^th – September 2nd

- 1 to 2 nights to Sooke Inlet stopping overnight possibly at Port Renfrew

Reaching Sooke between August 14^th and September 2^nd.

Sooke to Victoria August 14^th– September 3rd

- 1 night to Victoria. Reaching Victoria between August 15^th and September 3^rd.

Victoria to Saltspring Island August 15^th – September 5th

- 1 to 3 nights to Scott Point Salt

spring stopping overnight in the gulf island somewhere.

Reaching Scott Point between August 16^th and September 5^nd.

Saltspring to Ruxton August 16^th -

-1 to 2 days to Ruxton Island

and stay as long as possible, or do whatever, or return to Ladner moorage if we’ve run out of time

Holly crap, that was epic just getting that all down.

Yah, so, the plan is pretty much get up past Cortes and slow down from there. The inside passage up past Cortes will largely be determined by when the tide is going the right way. There are some crazy currents up between the islands around that portion of the trip. The outside of Vancouver Island down the coast will be dependent on the weather conditions. August is usually not too bad though and the prevaili

ng wind and current should be down the coast.

If you’re thinking of meeting up with us after about the first week (or you're sick of us after the first week) of this trip then flying may be the way to go, flights from YVR to (one way on Pacific Coast):

Campbell River, AKA Scrambled Liver, are about $120 (tax in)

Port Hardy: $175

Things get pretty expensive flying if you want to hook up anywhere between Port Hardy and Tofino unless you’re doing a group rate through Tofino Air. It only makes sense if you can pack the plane. I think they take six passengers? They will drop you off anywhere as long as there is a dingy to row out to you which is not a problem. They won’t drop you on the rocks.

The proletariat chariot to Tofino is $66 from Vancouver, a pretty cheap way of getting there or back if you want to meet up with us in the middle of the trip.

Getting to or from Victoria is pretty obvious.

That’s about as much thought as I want to put into it at this stage. Just throwing that out there at this point, if you’re wondering what to do with yourself this August. Most people will never have the opportunity to see any of this part of the world and with the way things are going, it will never be the same.

No where near there yet...

At this point I wouldn’t really call this website officially launched so if you’re looking for adventures on the high seas, we’re no where near there yet, we’re on the three year plan. We are still caught up in the dreamer stage of things, so who knows if we will actually make it out of here, out of careers, out of our scheduled lives. I think this site will continue to be totally rearranged right up until we cast off. We are still in the dreaming stage and not totally committed for this round the world cruise thing because of our other commitments. Erin is more or less ready to go, it is me who needs to finalize a bunch of stuff. Some minor things that I need to settle. After buying the boat with just about every penny I had, there were a couple things that sunk me into the negative. Provincial Sales Tax… What a piss off. I knew I was going to get dinged, but was pretending that it wasn’t going to happen. It ended up being a little over $12,000 Canadian (that’s probably about $11,000 US right now). In Canada, the sale of your primary residence is pretty much tax free, so when you buy your next primary residence you also don’t have to pay PST. The problem with going and buying a boat with the proceeds is that as far as Revenue Canada is concerned, a boat is not allowed to be a primary residence. There is an exception to this. If it has no method of self propulsion, then it is ok. I.e. if it has an engine, or a sail, you’re screwed. It would be fine if your home is just randomly floating around and bumping into things, but as soon as you give it the means to locate itself into a logical location, that’s not a primary residence. Who came up with that crap. Another thing about this that I’m pretending to ignore: Eventually when it comes time to sell the boat, am I going to have to pay capital gains on the boat? Not that it will go up in value, I’m quite aware that it’s going to go down, but what about the value itself that was originally gained on the sale of my house that was at that point free of capital gains? If you know, and it’s bad news, don’t tell be, I’d rather not know. Ignorance is bliss when it comes to taxes I’m just going to assume that it will be sold at a loss. I could have avoided the PST if I didn’t import the boat up into Canada. I could be wrong here because this is not what I did, I did end up bringing the boat up from the States. Even though my boat was already registered in Vancouver Canada, I bought the boat when it was parked down in Point Roberts, Washington. I may have been able to not import the boat up and not pay the PST, but I think technically that would mean that I would have had to pay Washington taxes. Or from what I understand Oregon has little or no sales tax on boats. I don’t know, it all seemed a bit convoluted, and we’re not planning on going anywhere yet so I just paid their dam tax when the letter came for Revenue Canada.
One of the diesel engines ended up throwing a rod and needed to be replaced last summer. I mean the entire engine needed to be replaced. That put me another $11,000 CND in the hole. Not a lot I can say about that without repeating myself. I wrote about that on my “Shit happens” page of my website.
Student loans: I’ve paid most of it off when I sold the house and was pretending that I wouldn't need to pay PST on buying the boat, but I still have about $6,600 CND left to pay off to the Federal Government.
I guess my point of all this is before we cast off into the wild blue yonder, I’ve got about $16,000 CND that I have to pay off in debt. With the exception of my favorite weakness of going down to the Fringe Café (local pub in Kits) and blowing 30 or 50 bucks on beer about once a week, I’m scrimping my pennies and putting about a thousand bucks every pay cheque, every couple of weeks toward paying the debt off. Probably about a year to get even as long as there aren’t any other major unforeseen mechanical failures. Erin calls it being squeezey with her money and she’s a lot better at it than I am. From what I’ve read of people who are currently cruising around the world, you can get by fairly comfortably on about 10 or 12 thousand US each a year. Some do it for a lot less, and others probably spend more in a week than I do in a year. For a three year trip, Erin’s already got the money together. Me on the other hand, its going to take a couple years after I settle my debts to get that together so we are on a three year plan at this point.
A lot of people won’t understand this but the other big factor on leaving is Louie Bert the freckle faced dog. We have a commitment to each other that is beyond description. If a stranger, Louie and I were in a plain, that had run out of fuel and was about to crash and we only had two Para shoots… Louie would definitely put one on (he’s almost that smart) and give me one and we’d jump together leaving the stranger in the plain. Louie is about 9 1/2 I think. It would kill him if I left him and as far as commitments go, this is the strongest commitment keeping me from leaving, so we are here for probably not much more than three years while Louie is still around. You probably don’t understand, but you probably have never lived with a Border Collie. They are not your average dog.