Here is Estrellita’s home for the cyclone season, and you may have noticed she isn’t floating in the crystal clear blue waters of the Marshall Islands.

No one is certain (still) whether this year will be an official El Nino year or not, but with the increased west wind anomalies and the elevated risk of typhoon activity in the Marshall’s, the fact that the Marshall’s are atolls (and our own sucky experience with wind from the wrong side in an atoll), we decided to delay heading to the RMI until next year.

We debated staying in Tonga, and were on the waiting list for the keel pits in Fiji, but by mid-October had decided that we would head to New Zealand for the first time. After planning to be in NZ at the end of 2012 we figured it was about time! We had gone so far as sending in our arrival paperwork to NZ, in a 24 hour period we were notified that we had a spot in the keel pits in Fiji if we wanted it and we had a pretty fantastic opportunity to as caretakers as a resort in Tonga.

The decision: Ultimately, we decided to make the passage to Fiji, put Estrellita in the keel pit, prep her for leaving, and fly back to Tonga for some resort time near our favorite kiting location in Vava’u. And so we did…

I’ll write more about the passage, our experience going into a keel pit, what we did to prep the boat, finish up my memories of Tonga by boat, and write about our land travel over the next few months.

The plane plan: We aren’t certain where we will head after Tonga. NZ by plane is a real possibility but we are staying open to other opportunities (anyone have any flight passes from Nadi or Auckland?) but we’ll end up back in Fiji in time to do a month or so of work on the boat and splash in Fiji at the very start of the season to start exploring a new country.

Our strategic retreat went: Barkley to Port San Juan arriving at dark and leaving first thing in the morning, Port San Juan to Sooke arriving in the afternoon, enjoying the sunset and a lazy morning and then leaving for two nights at the Royal Victoria Yacht Club in Cadboro Bay and another night at anchor, a night at anchor at Sidney Spit to enjoy before we headed to a dock for a few months*.

Here we are after living and traveling together for 3 months on a 35 foot boat. Yes, we still like each other --->

If the low pressure system hadn’t been chasing us, we were going to do a day hike on part of the famous West Coast Trail while we were at Port San Juan but that wasn’t to be.

Sooke was surprisingly beautiful by boat. We anchored just off the spit and I thought “why haven’t we been here before”. Again, we didn’t make it onshore to walk on the park because we were moving fast.

The Royal Victoria Yacht Club was very fun. Everyone was friendly, the beers at the club house were relatively cheap and we were excited to splurge on lattes, italian deli and groceries at Peppers. Plus, we got to entertain good friends at the yacht club as if we had paid the big bucks to join. Finally, they were having races while we were there so we anchored in Cadboro Bay and watched children and adults round the buoys with various levels of skill (not always correlated with age).


 

We had a lovely last night enjoying the sunset and having a nice dinner at Sidney Spit. Sidney Spit is just outside of Sidney where we lived for a time while preparing to cruise and is a favorite quick get away for local boats. There is a hiking path and, of course, a long sandy spit that nearly disappears at very high tides. Here is a photo from our flight up Vancouver Island.

This won’t be the first time I express this here, but it was difficult not to feel like this was the end of our “cruising” because we will do so much less travel by boat this winter, much more travel by land, and also because for at least the next few months our boat will be “back home” or at least in the same city as before if not the same exact location. If we were spending the hurricane season in a foreign port I wouldn’t be feeling the same way. Even though we are planning exciting trips, some to exotic locations, there was a feeling of loss and transition for me during our night at Sidney Spit.

It’s a good thing we have a boatwork to do list a mile long to keep our minds off such things…and we didn’t have time to mull on anything because just as our vagabonding took a pause, we were backyard-less again. More on that soon.

*except that didn’t work out and we were booted back onto the water again scrambling for a new backyard.

Here is the critter report from the first few days of our cruise:

One baby seal (no photo) who was as small as an otter and crying for its mother. Tres triste!

A bunch of rock crabs, now in our bellies:



A number of bald eagles:



A pod of brightly colored skinny whales:



And one huge flying bird we couldn't identify that swooped down over us at Portland Island, that we are calling the "George Bird":

Last summer Carol taught some gentlemen formation flying in their Yak's. As a thank you, they let him take out their little Grummin plane which we took advantage of this past Sunday for some up island reconnaissance. He took a "hero shot" of me with the plane.



Even though the weather was poor it was a fun Sunday. He let me fly* and even shoot the approach for a few landings. We were able to fly over the Broughtons which is one of the areas we are planning to visit by boat in the next year. It was fun to see that after having seen some of the West Coast of Vancouver Island. My initial impression is that the West Coast is more wild and visually stunning but I'm more excited about visiting the Broughtons after flying over the dozens of puffy little islets surrounding the main islands.

I took a bunch of aerial photos of anchorages which I was planning to post here but I'm a wee bit too busy right now and so I'll do that at anchor some day.

*Well, I controlled the stick while he did the flaps...and trim...and throttle.

Mirrors for formation
Originally uploaded by ontogeny

Lest this blog become only a list of boat projects I thought I would post a photo of something else we did. This is Carol and I flying in formation in two Chinese Yaks. OK, I'm not flying...