I ended my first day on Susia wandering the island a bit and chatting with others folks who were there for the night. I was invited to several campfires and got some great advice about my route from others who had been there before. I’ve been so impressed with how friendly and willing to share other boaters are!
Day two turned out to be more exciting than I had expected in several ways. The plan was for 14 miles of sailing to Stuart Island along the Canadian border (a portion of which has several big currents that meet). I did my final weather check (which looked OK) and headed out.
I wasn’t 10 minutes out of the harbor when I heard a mayday call from another boat about two miles away. They had hit a drifting log and the boat was taking on water with 5 people and a dog on board. I had my first experience talking with the Coast Guard on the radio getting their coordinates so I could go to them (check that off the to-do list!). I was about 15 minutes away, but fortunately, someone else was closer and arrived before I did. Based on what I heard on the radio, the boat sank completely in under 5 minutes but everyone (including the dog) on the boat was OK. Over the course of the day, I heard 4 other mayday calls for boats that were either sinking or needed help in some way (hint: this is foreshadowing, turns out that the weather report WAS NOT very accurate this day…).
My next hour was beautiful, and the highlight was when a pod of dolphins showed up and swam along with me for about half an hour. Such a cool experience!
It was about the time that the dolphins swam away that I entered the area where currents were merging and the wind also increased significantly (and pretty suddenly, and much more than the forecast showed). I’ll just say that the combination of wind and waves that came on so quickly created some “challenging” conditions for me. I had far too much sail up, and trying to reduce sails in waves and wind had me spending the next 30 minutes wondering if I’d bitten off more than I should have. When I’m up on deck I wear a harness that attaches me to the boat in case a wave comes over the bow and tries to knock me overboard, but it turns out that was very little comfort. 🙂 Based on what I heard on the radio I was not the only person that did not expect these winds, and in the end it all worked out and the whole thing was another learning experience.
The wind cleared out as quickly as it arrived, and after things settled down the rest of the day was “smooth sailing” and beautiful. And Stuart Island was a great stop! I’ll post something else about it later, but it’s a can’t miss if you are ever in the area!
