Barkley Sound was a true vacation. We did, however, have many problems to be worked out on the Isuzu diesel. It got so bad that we got to the point of not trusting the engine at all. Every time we went out, we had some kind of problem. We joked that, yes, our diesel is going to make us true sailors yet! :-) Thank goodness we do have sails!

Barkley Sound offers a wide variety of anchorages and is an absolutely beautiful place to visit. The best part of all was we had anchorages to ourselves most of the time. Two or three boats was a crowd. As we said before, the wildlife was outstanding. Bald Eagles were a dime a dozen, we saw black bears twice, we saw a sea otter swiming along on its back with food on its chest, and of course the great Canadian Goose! We were lucky with the weather while we were in Barkley. We had sun most of the time, I think it rained twice while we were there. We were much luckier than friends who said they visited in July, where it rained most of the time.

One of the frustrations for us as newbies to the cruising world was that of anchoring. While we were in Barkley Sound, it seemed that it always took us at least three tries to get the anchor to set! (We have 35 lb CQR w/200 feet of 5/16 chain plus 100+ feet nylon rode). Anchorages in Barkley Sound are overall very deep (compared to the 10 - 15 feet we were used to anchoring in in the Columbia River). We finally realized that we were not setting out enough scope when we were trying to set the anchor. We were figuring scope from the depth sounder, which is about 2 feet under the waterline, and we weren't compensating for the freeboard to the bowsprit either. Thus, often times we were trying to set the anchor with a 3:1 scope or less. Hmmm, just doesn't seem to work. Needless to say, anchoring was one of our trials during our trip up to Barkley.

I have to tell you, though about a specific anchorage, up Pipestem Inlet (for those of you who have actually been to Barkley). First off, we wanted to anchor off Lucky Creek (great little creek to dinghy up with waterfalls at the end of the creek where I fell in). But the anchorage had a boat in it and Jay and I were not feeling up to being neighborly at the time, so decided to find something else nearby. We tried Cataract Creek which Ron, the former owner had mentioned in his log. But we weren't happy with the bottom at Cataract Creek and wondered what kind of anchoring Ron had done with this boat in this boat's earlier life. So we trolled a couple of nearby bays looking for a suitable anchorage.

We found "No Name Creek" nearby, which was about 2.5 hours since we originally arrived at Lucky Creek. There was a shelf near the creek's entrance which looked a little iffy, but in the end, we decided to go ahead and try anchoring there, figuring we'd set a stern anchor in the creek mouth and we'd be fine. By the way, this was a beautiful and very hot day and we'd had a beautiful sail from Ucluelet. Well, after some dilly-dallying we got the anchors down with less than 3:1 scope (compensating for the freeboard and 2' below-the-water-line depth sounder). Bow Anchor was set facing NW and stern anchor set in about 10' of water in the mouth of the creek. It was a trying anchoring for us, but in the end, after Jay sounded the bottom with the dinghy and a leadline, looking for those boat-eating rocks, we decided it would be OK... as long as the wind didn't pickup on the nose.

Yes, you guessed, the wind picked up on the nose. Luckily, not the first night. We had a great night and day at No Name Creek, but the second night, the wind picked up and it wasn't going to quit. The tide was falling and our anchor rode was stretching out. The lee shore was less than a boat length away and it was getting close to sunset. We asked ourselves, "Do we want to sit here and wonder if the wind will let up this evening and do anchor watch until it does, AND hope that the less than 3:1 scope will hold, or do we want to pickup anchor and go over to Lucky Creek where there are no longer any boats and the logging operation has shut down for the weekend?" What would you rather do? We decided, yes, let's pull up anchor.

The problem was this... We had the bow and the stern anchor and the wind was hitting us on the forward port quarter, and we had a lee shore less than a boatlength away on the aft starboard quarter. How, then, do we get the stern anchor up without fouling the prop with the stern line as well as not letting the stern fall off into the lee shore. So... we started the engine, then Jay got in the dinghy and followed the stern line aft to pull up the stern anchor. He got to the anchor and pulled it up into the dinghy. As he pulled the anchor into the dinghy, I Started pulling on the stern anchorline as fast as I could and Jay was also pulling in the anchorline in from the dinghy. You've never seen a dinghy come barreling stern-first to the mothership so fast. What a stern-wake! What a sight! I was in hysterics laughing at the sight of this wee little dinghy with Jay aboard barreling back towards Kestrel! I laughed so hard! Jay didn't realize what was happening at first. It was a hoot! I wish I had had a video camera to catch it... In any case, we got dinghy and sternline secured and motored up to the bow anchor and subsequently got the bow anchor aboard. We motored over to Lucky Creek, dropped and set the anchor first go and were thankful to sleep and not stand anchorwatch all night!

Our favorite anchorage in Barkley Sound was in the lee of Reeks Island. A wee little anchorage with only enough room for one boat. It was very pleasant and had good holding.

From Barkley we ventured down to Victoria. Victoria is such a lovely town. Very romantic and very European. We thoroughly enjoyed being back in civilization, though it was a culture shock at first seeing so many people after being so isolated up in Barkley Sound. While in Victoria, we bought a liferaft new since the US dollar was so strong against the Canadian dollar. Mom and Dad will now be able to have peace of mind, cuz we now have our last bit of safety gear!

Guy and Melissa Stevens from Seattle came to visit us while we were in Victoria. They delivered some items which we had needed for the boat and they had a nice mini-vacation while they were at it. They sailed with us back to Port Angeles where we cleared customs back into the US. On our sail back, we tried our Autohelm windvane for the first time. The vane works like a charm and is silent! After having used the electric wheel pilot for our steerer for so long, having the windvane do the steering was a true pleasure. It's very easy to use. Don't leave home without it!

We left Port Angeles the following day for our long-legged trip down to Newport Oregon, where we are now. The trip out of the Strait of Juan de Fuca was alright. No big winds, even though there were small craft advisories out. The winds built to maybe 20 kts on the nose, but no seas really to speak of. The chop had Kestrel down to about 3-4 kts at one point, but we were still making progress! We had a nice sail that night out from Tatoosh Island. We kept about 20-25 miles offshore to avoid the crab pots.

We motored most of the next day and night to glassy flat seas. Saw a shark and a sunfish during that day. The phosforescents were magnifiscent the second night out. The bow wake was like a flashlight lighting the way and you've never seen so many fish dart away from the bow of the boat, leaving lighted trails behind them. It's amazing that you do not see the fish during the day, but at night with the phosforescence, they are very visible. The stars were also very clear along with the Milkyway to guide us along.

The next morning, the wind started picking up about 0930, but the seas were much bigger than what the wind was showing. It's like the seas came out of nowhere. By mid-afternoon, we were down to double-reefed main and staysail. The wind was 20-25 knots and the seas were building. We had some porpoises swimming in our bow-wake for awhile that day which was a treat. We erred again in our ETA of Newport and were scheduled to arrive about 2300 that night, so decided to heave-to about 20 or 30 miles out of Newport for the night and cross the bar first thing in the morning.

They say after you have been cruising for awhile, that first experience of 25 knot winds at night will seem like a piece of cake. I hope that is true... But believe me, a wimp that I am, 25 knots of wind at night is kind of scary when you are unsure of yourself and your boat! Jay faired much better than I on the fear-factor! Needless to say, neither of us slept much if any that night. The swells were very uncomfortable. Maybe about 7-8 feet or so with a periodic 10 footer for good measure. We had water over the bow and into the cockpit and we even fell off one wave, tho' not far and had a kerplunk as we hit on the bottom. Thank goodness fibreglass is forgiving. We ended up with a triple reefed main and a reefed staysail when we hove-to.

Lesson learned was that Kestrel does not heave-to and stay with her bow quartering the seas -- she falls off beam-to then rounds back into the wind where she should be -- quartering the seas. We have some learning to do with heaving-to, and the motion is NOT better than running IMHO (computereze for In My Humble Opinion). However, it should be noted that we were NOT in a gale, we were in Force 6 winds. We are a Marconi-rigged cutter and we had both the triple-reefed Main up and the single-reefed staysail. The biggest problem we think is that there was not enough wind to heave-to properly and that our boat probably does not need the staysail to heave-to comfortably. As we got underway again in the early morning (0400) we eventually went down to only the reefed staysail until daylight, tho' we were significantly undercanvased.

The cool thing about this rock-n-rolly night, however, was the Northern Lights, aka Aurora Borealis. Neither Jay nor I had seen the Northern Lights before, and to see them off of Newport Oregon, so far south, was quite the treat! The whole Northern sky was alit and the waves of the Aurora Borealis were inspiring. Just imagine what it would have been like if we were still in Canada, the colors would have been magical!

In the morning when the light finally arrived (and the wind never did die down to 15 knots that night as the NOAA weather radio had predicted), the seas really weren't as bad as they seemed at night. We were still rolling heavily, even when we got under sail again, but we reckon that's just par for the course. Daylight, however, sheds a complete different light on the whole picture. Jay was the trouper and I was the scaredy-cat in our first ordeal with stiffer winds and big seas!

Coming in to harbor, we were in neutral, and the wind was still pushing us at 4 knots in the marina. In idle-reverse, we got her down to 1 knot. Amazing the forces of the wind.

We are now in Newport for a week. We are looking foward to friends and family visiting. If you Oregonians have nothing else to do over the Labor Day Weekend, drive on down to Newport and come visit us at South Beach Marina at the end of D-Row. Come visit Keiko too, as this is the last weekend the whale will be in town before his journey to Iceland.

Next stop... Coos Bay, or Crescent City, or Fort Bragg, or San Francisco! Keep in touch!

Fair winds of less than 25 knots!
       Leslie & Jay