Published in CRUISING HELMSMAN, Sydney, Australia, September 1998

WILD WEST COAST OF VANCOUVER ISLAND

by N. J. Johnston

The Orca came on us suddenly, breaking the surface with a whoosh of exhaled air. The experience was a surprise and delight, but it was not entirely unexpected. A dozen whale watchers, dressed all in red, sat hunched and waiting in two big Zodiacs. The boats rose and fell on a mild ocean swell just a few miles from the city of Victoria, on Vancouver, Canada's huge island in the North Pacific. In these waters, tourists dressed in astronautical jumpsuits are a sure sign of Orca.

The pod of Orca pass within 15 meters of the waiting boats, led by the unmistakably erect dorsal fin of a bull. On achieving their moment of interspecies communication, the whale watchers gasp and giggle like children. We just keep sailing westward in Papageno, a 34-foot Crealock, out the Strait of Juan de Fuca toward the Pacific Ocean. Gradually, we leave behind schools of recreational fishermen at Muir Point, then Otter and Sheringham Points as well, and head, with determination, for the wild west coast of Vancouver.

Normally, sailing north here means beating to weather, an up-hill fight all the way. A nearshore, south-to-north current of one knot is nice, but small compensation for having to fight wind and wave. The best way to reach the west coast of Vancouver is a counter-clockwise circumnavigation of the island, because the prevailing wind blows out of the west and northwest. Since the island is 450 km. long, it is rare to see any but local boats. If you want to meet Canadians who love ocean cruising, this is the place.

Barkley Sound is the major destination for cruisers on the west side of Vancouver. Although there are few real dangers offshore, reaching Barkley from the south can be a grueling ordeal. But we were lucky. Graced with a week of southerly winds, we sailed all the way to Barkley in two days.

Late in the afternoon of this first day, just as the Strait broadens to meld with the Pacific, we find ourselves in the middle of another pod of Orca and take it as a token of luck. Twenty or thirty of the so-called killer whales, singles and pairs and family groups with calves and a bull or two for security, ride the ebb tide with us out to sea. Before long we can pick out individuals. In this pod spread over a kilometer, there is a bull with a rakish hook to his huge dorsal fin, and two youngsters given to leaping free of the water and splashing down hard. There is a cow that gives her tail a flirtatious flip with every dive.

Between the tide and a southeast wind of 12 knots, we are making good progress, but the sedately traveling Orca pass us up in fairly short order. They are aloof despite the daily occurrence of humans. Following a course that intersects our own, a tight group of six or seven dive on our starboard side and, in due time, surface neatly to port.

The rocky west coast of Vancouver claims the world's title for shipwrecks per mile, but you would never guess it on this soft gray day. The Strait turns glassy just as we begin to feel full ocean swell. Puffy clouds hang half way down the Olympic Mountains on the American side, stopping in a broken but even line like lace on lingerie. On the Canadian side, the line of tree trunks exposed above a horizontal clearcut at Jordan River looks like a mouthful of baleen on a great whale.

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