Archives for category: — British Columbia

Spotted: Cruising Boat, Aloha 32

May 20, 2013 //

We’ve been looking for a boat for our Pacific Northwest trip and spotted this one for ourselves. We put in an offer on it last week. Traveling up to the Pacific NW four times since last fall, looking for a boat to call our own was getting expensive. We saw this boat online and made an offer. We haven’t even seen it in person.

It’s an Aloha 32, a Mark Ellis design that’s similar to the Niagara 35, a capable boat that was, alas, out of our budget. Both are well-built, spacious, and do away with the ubiquitous v-berth to make room for more galley and salon space. (The berths in these boats are aft.) From what we hear, the boat does have some delamination issues in the deck. Whether they are major or minor issues, the survey will reveal.

We’re leaving to head up north in about a week, boat or no boat. I hope this one passes it’s survey. If not, at least we’ll be up there to continue our search. Good luck, Carmana!

Tags adventure, Aloha 32, Pacific NW, sailboat, WCXC

Categories - Canada, - Pictures, - Ships / Boats, - Spotted:, - Trip: Sailing the Pacific Northwest, - United States, — British Columbia, — Washington, FEATURES, MEDIA, North America, PLACES, VEHICLES

The Museum at Campbell River

May 1, 2013 //

If you ever find yourself in Campbell River, on Vancouver Island, I highly recommend checking out the Museum at Campbell River. It features exhibits that cover history of the area from native tribes to whites settling and the subsequent logging, fishing, and tourism industries. The exhibit is very well designed and displayed.

Native ceremonial masks were lit on the wall of one darkened room. We barely had time to take them in before a voice spoke up to tell their story. Natalie jumped and grabbed my arm. After we both relaxed a bit, we listened to The Treasures of Siwidi, a story of the supernatural exploits of an ancestor of the Kwakwaka’wakw people.

The rest of the museum was equally well done with room-sized recreations of logging shacks and old hotels, interesting displays explaining fishing techniques, and so on. As I said, highly recommended.

More photos below. Read the rest of this entry »

Categories - Canada, - Museum, - Pictures, — British Columbia, MEDIA, North America, PLACES, THINGS TO DO

Boat Shopping

April 23, 2013 //

We were up in Seattle searching for a boat a couple of weeks ago. We’ve been seriously looking since fall of last year for our upcoming Pacific Northwest trip this summer and fall. We saw several from Tacoma, Washington all the way up to Campbell River, BC. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags adventure, boats, WCXC

Categories - Canada, - Pictures, - Ships / Boats, - Trip: Sailing the Pacific Northwest, - United States, — British Columbia, — Washington, —- Seattle, FEATURES, MEDIA, North America, PLACES, VEHICLES

Trying Our Hands at a Life at Sea

April 7, 2013 //


A Pearson 32 for sale in Port Townsend, WA

First off, if you’re a regular reader of this blog, my apologies for the lack of posts in the past month. We’ve been making some life-changing plans here at WCXC and they’ve been taking some time. What sorts of plans, you ask? Well, my girlfriend and I moved in together, and we’re heading up to the Pacific Northwest for a few months and buying a sailboat.

The first seeds of this plan were sown a few years ago while some friends of mine and I were in northwestern Washington, chartering a boat in the San Juan Islands. Our first night out of Friday Harbor we anchored a few miles north in a cove at Jones Island. Early the next morning, as a thin mist hung over the cove under an orange and purple sky, I saw that we had a new neighbor. A beautiful, old, wooden sloop, lying still at anchor with smoke drifting out horizontally from its chimney lay off our beam. The owner and his black lab, appeared in the cockpit, got into their dinghy and headed for the shore. Wow, what a life, I thought.

That’s the life we’re aiming for, at least on an experimental basis. We’re going find out if it’s possible to cruise the amazingly beautiful waters of the Salish Sea, east of Vancouver Island, while working remotely from the boat and earning a living. In my day job, I’m an illustrator. With a laptop and a cell antenna on the mast, it seems feasible.

Of course, I’ll still post about off-road and overland topics, and we’ll still take trips with the truck. We’ll just be adding a seafaring component to the blog.

I’ll keep you posted on how it goes. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags adventure, sailboat, sailing, WCXC

Categories - Beach & Ocean, - Canada, - Pictures, - Ships / Boats, - Trip: Sailing the Pacific Northwest, - Trips: The Western US, - United States, — British Columbia, — Washington, FEATURES, MEDIA, North America, PLACES, PLACES TO SEE, VEHICLES

The Library: The Curve of Time

February 15, 2013 //

We finished this lovely little book a few weeks ago. It’s a collection of stories, told by Wylie Blanchet, of cruising the coast of British Columbia in the summers of the 1920s, with her five children (and sometimes a dog), in a 25-foot motorboat.

They traveled at a time when the BC is coast was changing from a traditional land to a modern one. They came across Indian villages abandoned for the summer, remote inlets with perhaps a single cabin and a sole occupant, and, at one point, a bear, which the children mistook for a man standing in the forest watching them.

These days you don’t often read about adventures as told from the perspective of a mother and her children but there they were cruising up the coast of Vancouver Island, a woman and her five children setting off every summer and coming back with adventures to tell.

Link: The Curve of Time