By Larry McCullough

No, this is not some political rant! I wasn’t sure what title to use, so I used all three.

Jamie and I took off from Vancouver on our way to Salt Spring, a nice little town, might as well talk about the middle title, “What a disappointment” first. We walk around the town and are on the hunt for a place that has “Dive Bar” in their name, it wasn’t a Dive Bar, believe me I know what a Dive Bar is, it was a small café. We did find a nice pub right here in our marina though, “Moby’s Pub”.

Ok, back to the boat trip and the title “They are so confused!”. Again, not a political rant, don’t get me started, this is about the seas. I checked Windy the day before and when I woke up. The forecast was for seas of 1 foot every 3 seconds near Vancouver and then up 2 feet every 3 seconds when we were in the Strait of Georgia, the large body of water between Vancouver the City and Vancouver Island which is about 18 miles wide. When we left Vancouver and went under Lion’s Gate Bridge we could see a very dark sky in the distance with occasional lightning strikes, not good. We also started going northwest into some 2 to 3 foot waves that were about 4 seconds apart. We went in this direction for about 6 miles then turned southwest and we were now taking them on the starboard beam (right side of boat). Now for the confusion, the storm was kicking up some pretty good westerly wind waves along with the northerly swells that were coming straight down the Strait creating a confused sea.

The Captain approved ‘ShockWave’ seat (picture from a prior days transit).

Now this is totally counter intuitive but our new Life Proof 35 is so much better in these conditions than our prior Independence. Maybe better is not the best description, maybe pleasurable, no not pleasurable, it sucked, but … how about not as bad. The old Independence had stabilizers, little wings that came out of the boat below the water line that would move to counter the wave action. Our new boat has me at the helm steering all over the place trying to ride the waves instead of fighting them. A fellow boater described the action to me as being similar to skiing moguls, I liked that description and got his approval to use it. The boat has what is called a “Shockwave” seat, I go up and down with the boat and attached to the seat is an armrest which at the end of it has the throttle control. This allows me to control the throttle with out jerking it and makes for a smoother ride especially when I need to pull back on the throttle so we do not do a belly flop of the backside of a wave.

The ferry can really kick up a ton of debris…watch-out!

The water was so rough it was hard to see any debris, total concentration on both Jamie’s and my part to avoid hitting anything, which fortunately we did not hit anything and I did not see any debris until…

“Holy Shi..” we make it across the Straits and are out of the rough water and are finally able to take a breath…not for long. We are now at “Active Pass” to get past the outer islands to make our way to Salt Spring. We are cruising along at about 10 MPH and a ferry cuts across the channel in front of us to enter the loading area on the island, behind the area is a rather large area that has fairly flat water but with the tides turning it looks like the water is boiling, short little 3 inch waves all over. Suddenly hidden in those tiny little waves is an 8 foot long log, maybe 2 foot in circumference, barely visible, “Holy Sh..”, I pull up on the throttles, turn to port and watch the log go along the side of the boat right outside my window. As it gets to midship I turn hard right to kick the stern of the boat away from it to protect the propellers! Sorry, no time for pictures.

After all that I did not need a disappointment!