The boat is very flat and calm, the birds are chipping outside and the grocery store is only a 5 minute walk away. The pleasures of land ! We arrived in Winter Harbour yesterday afternoon after an extremely comfortable passage from Maui, Hawaii. Our memories of white sand beaches, crystal clear water and palm trees of Hawaii made for an extremely dramatic contrast to the rocky shorelines, kelp and huge fir trees of the Canadian coast we saw yesterday. The interval between the two, leaving one climate, spending weeks at sea, and then entering a completely different climate created a pretty dramatic landfall and had us all ohhh’ing and ahhh’ing.
What added to the impact was the fog. We could not see land until we were literally 100m from the beach. We sailed out of a huge fog bank, directly into a flotilla of casual day fisherman. It shocked us but probably shocked them more to see a sailboat come ripping out of the fog bank, 100m away, heading directly at them with four dirty unwashed souls aboard !
Passage by the numbers: We sailed a final distance of 3200nm (5760 km), The rumbline is only 2200nm (3960km), it took us 21 full days, we completed 12 manta surface trawls, 6 water quality samples, drank 320 litres of water, have 10 litres of fuel left, motored for 124 hours, had an average speed of 6.3 knts, completed 63 day/night shifts each, spend 5 days in the fog navigating by radar, caught 4 Mahi-Mahi and 5 Tuna, broke 1 lower stay, torque the other one slightly, and completely destroyed our old 135 Genoa (RIP)… this list could go on forever.
The point: We are back in Canada ! After spending 3.5 years circling the globe and always thinking about sailing home, we are finally here. We are happy to have no more major passages to do and now are going to settle into a fantastic rut of looking for trash and waves all the down the west coast of Vancouver Island.
We have a couple repairs to complete but then will be on our way. Only Hugh and I on board until the 22nd, then we will be joined by Ryan and Andrew Naysmith of Oak Bay Johnny Productions, who will be flying in fine style to somewhere on the coast! Whoop Whoop.