S/V Rainshadow

We had a delightful summer cruise – another 1500-something mile journey along the British Columbia coast. Each year we gain more comfort with living on the boat, and each year we wish to go further than the summer weather window allows us to go.

The thing about cruising the BC central coast is that it is cold and grey. Anytime you go inland, it tends to be sunny and warm – but along the outer passage it’s just plain cold. We felt like we spent the summer “overwintering” along the BC Central Coast after we had “summer” in Hawaii during the winter months. Usual garb includes stocking caps and wool socks.

Despite the weather, we really enjoyed looking at mountains, trees, whales and water for 3 months. Some notable events of this cruise:

We got as far north as Hartley Bay, which is just off Wright Sound at the mouth of Douglass Channel. Wright Sound was a wonderful place – full of breaching frisky whales.

Van has pulled in some very large and yummy fish. Tally was something like 8 salmon (including 2 sockeye), 2 ling cod (one weighed about 15 lbs) and of course Rockfish. We had delightful seafood dinners nearly all summer long.

I ran aground on the mud flat at the head of Kynoch inlet in Fiord lands. No harm done, we floated off 2.5 hours later as the tide came in. I never ran aground before, but now I am a real skipper. We both had a good laugh about it after we had the kedge anchor set.

We gained some good experience in some heavy weather, proving once again that Rainshadow is a tough boat that handles a fresh breeze with ease. And every time we took green water over the bow, we appreciated the windscreen and fully enclosed cockpit. My, those exposed aft cockpit boaters look miserable at times.

But we also had a lot of light wind days. We flew a spinnaker for the first time – and now we are sold on the importance of light air sails. It was a used spinnaker that we picked up at the last minute before departing. Funny thing about the sail – it is marked with CN 32. Could this mean “Camper Nicholson 32?” The Nic 38 and Nic 32 share the same mast, maybe this spinnaker was originally used on a Nic 32?

Though we wished we could return down the west coast of Vancouver Island like we did last year, the weather started deteriorating in late August so we thought it prudent to take the more protected route home. We had some nice sailing days on the way home – which is better than we can say about last year’s trip around the west coast!

Many more daily memories available at svrainshadow.tumblr.com – but here are some photo memories.