Author Archives: CB

I’ve finally gotten of my butt and decided to get a webpage/blog up. This won’t be a daily updated thing. But I wanted to have a place that I could post pictures and post about our boat Palarran and the trips we take on her around the Puget Sound for now, and later….much later, the world.

I’m just getting this up and running. So stay tuned for more pictures and posts.

So far on this trip, the West Coast of Vancouver Island is our favorite part.

The Broughtons were pretty cool, but I can say that if I were to do this trip again someday. I’d spend a lot less time there and more time in Desolation Sound, the Discovery Islands and out here on the West Coast.

I’m sure part of the reason was due to the weather. Cold and rainy is not a really good selling point. And thinking back, almost the entire time we were in the Broughton’s it was either cold or rainy. Or cold and raining. Or sorta cold and raining….you get the point.

Getting around the top of Vancouver island can be a bit tricky. It has to planned out and timed with the wind, weather, and tides. The very top of the island, Cape Scott, is notorious for rough seas and weather. We got lucky weather wise, sorta. The seas were up, but not as crazy as I imagined they would be or that they actually can be. But it was not exactly a walk in the park either. It was also foggy. We did not even see the Cape as we passed it.

After rounding the cape we stopped in an anchorage called Sea Otter Cove for a couple days to regroup and plan out our next big hurdle which was to round Brooks Peninsula. This also is a very serious place where the wind and waves can get dangerous. The day we rounded, the waves there were pretty impressive. The wind however was not, it was only blowing four knots. Which meant we could not carry any sail to steady the boat. So we rolled back and forth for a few hours while motoring. Never a lot of fun. But Tawn was having a good time sitting up on the bowsprit as we surfed down the waves.

I’m not really good at judging wave heights. If you would have asked me at the time, I would have said they were close to 30 feet. But since we lived through it and thinking back on it, my best guess is 10-12 foot waves. Which still make you feel very small. On one of the biggest waves, I looked at the knot meter to see we were going 10.1 knots an hour over the ground. That may not sound very fast to most people but trust me when I say that, for our boat, that is the equivalent of making the Kessel run in 12 parsecs. In non-dorky terms, we were hauling ass!!

We stopped at a number of anchorages after that and are currently sitting at anchor in Hot Springs Cove. Which so far has been awesome. We caught 3 big ass salmon on the way here, and watched gray whales playing around right at the entrance of the cove as we entered.

The hot springs that give this cove it’s name are about a mile and a half hike from the anchorage and almost indescribably cool. I am not going to let that stop me from trying to describe them though. I do not have internet access at this time to upload pictures, so words are going to have to do.

During the day the hot springs are packed full of tourist (ehem…I’m fully aware of the irony there) that get here by chartered boat and/or float plane. We wait till 7 or 8pm when they all head back to Tofino, to go out there.

The hot water flows out of a crack in the ground and smells like hell, which is what water at natural hot springs does. Other than being hot, smelling like shit is it’s job, so no big surprise there. The crack is about 300 feet from the very steep, very rocky shore. Right at the shore, it drops over a small cliff, maybe 20 feet high and forms two nice hot shower water falls. From there it fills up 3 or 4 small “pools”, each one slightly cooler that the one before and only big enough to fit 4-6 people, depending on how shy you are.

To be accurate, calling them pools is not very descriptive. It’s really a large ‘V’ shaped gap in the solid rock shoreline that is sectioned off by smaller boulders. Over the years, people have piled up and placed smaller rocks in between the larger boulders to form these pools. The last “pool” ends right where the swell/waves from the ocean hits the rocks.

As each wave hits the shore, a varying amount of cold ocean water will force it’s way in and cool off the lower pools for a few seconds. It is a very nice effect. On the larger waves and at high tide, more water will rush and is cold as hell, but in a few seconds the hot water will push it back and it heats up again. It is unbelievably cool. I call it stunt tubbing, due to the surge of water that comes in sometimes you really have to hold on.

As if all that was not enough, the whole time you are sitting there enjoying the water, the view you get between the “V” shaped gap is out to the open ocean and the sunset. The two nights we’ve been there so far, there have been whales out there messing about. It’s almost like someone planned it out.

I also should mention DeeOoGee. DeeOoGee is a local dog. DeeOoGee is crazy.

He lives in the small village across the cove. We saw him swimming around in the cove yesterday. No real hurry to get anywhere, he would swim up to each boat anchored out and whine or beg for attention or food or what ever else it is that dogs whine or beg for. At first we thought “holy shit, that dog has fallen off a boat”, but a local explained that this is what passes for normal behavior for DeeOoGee.

We’d see him swimming or walking all over the place. Our friend Kevin pulled him up into his dinghy and gave him a ride around the cove……..at this point, (three paragraphs and counting about a stray dog) you are probably wondering why i’m going on about this god damn dog and what makes him so crazy.

Fine, be that way.

This fuggin dog, will swim across the cove from his village, follow the trail out to the hot springs, swim out from the shore there and……..wait for it……….swim after, bark and play around with the god damn whales!!! I..shit..you..not. The whales don’t seem to mind, but other than getting harpooned or stuck on a beach, I don’t think whales really mind much that goes on around them.

To sum it all up, Hot Springs Cove…..one of coolest places we’ve been, ever…….so far.