Vancouver Island Circumnavigation - What We Learned

Circumnavigating Vancouver Island is not exactly like circumnavigating the planet.  It is, however, a significant journey in a small boat and a certain amount of planning is required. 

The following is the ‘Cliff Note’ version of the trip which should help:  A) Those with ADD-type personalities who want the info and highlights fast; B) Those who have a low-level of interest but are trying to be interested (perhaps a spouse or reluctant partner); and C) Those with limited time to read the whole Blog.

The Trip

Vancouver Island Victoria-to-Victoria is a 600-mile circumnavigation.  The route we did on our trip, starting in Seattle, with side trips to Desolation Sound and The Broughtons and five major inlets, was 1,200 miles 82 days and stops at 53 different locations. Of those stops, 33 were one-night lay overs.

This was our first big boat adventure.  Looking back over the trip, knowing what we do today, we probably would not do it much differently. We wanted an “Overview” journey, but one of discovery:  Time to see and meet the people and meander based on what people suggested we not miss.  Flexibility and the ‘meander’ factor were critical components to keeping the trip interesting for both of us. 

Fuel

Although not necessary, we fueled up whenever fuel was available.  We discovered there were plenty of fuel stops on both the East and West Side of the Island, largely to support literally hundreds of fishing boats. The pleasure cruiser – particularly sailors – are rare on the West side, but we had no problem obtaining good fuel.  In some locations, however, fuel is expensive and in others very expensive. At our home port in Poulsbo, WA, we paid $2:40/gallon (diesel).  In Tahsis, on the West side of Vancouver Island, we paid $5:21/gallon (translated from liters). We have a 500-600 mile range with our fuel capacity, so filling up in Port McNeill or Port Hardy at $4:50/gallon then again in Tofino at $4:10/gallon would have produced a more economical fuel plan. 

Lesson learned:  Plan your fuel stops based on your fuel capacity.  Generally, fuel was cheaper on the East side than the West side and generally, the bigger the town, the cheaper the fuel.  One notable exception, fuel is cheaper in Port Hardy than Port McNeill

Water

During this trip, all Vancouver Island and the small islands we visited were on some level of water restriction due to severe drought conditions. Watering yards, plants, washing cars & boats was prohibited. Filling our water tank (180 gallons) was never restricted.  All the water that is available, however, you may not want to put in your water tank (much less drink).  At Echo Bay, for example, the water comes from a lake filled with tannins from the nearby trees. It was a brown color and had a slight smell to it.  The Canadian water authority said it was OK to drink provided the water was first boiled.  We chose not to fill up here and to risk having our water tanks contaminated with brown water refuse.

It’s advisable to always run the any water you’re onboarding for a while before putting the water hose in the tank and to use some type of filter on the water hose you are filling your tanks with.

Tofino was the only place to charge for water one Loonie (Canadian dollar) for 15 minutes. This was supposed to give the customer 100 gallons of water.  The reality turned out to be about 30 gallons. We were also advised before we put our coin in the meter to make sure all the other boats had their hoses turned off or you would be supplying someone with your water.

Lesson Learned:  Conserve your onboard water, but you shouldn’t have to be miserly with it.  Make informed choices about the water you’re getting by asking the locals at the marina or in town.  Take showers at the marina when possible and use the onboard water for cooking and personal hygiene conservatively.

Food

The major towns - Sidney, Ladysmith, Nanaimo, Comox, Campbell River, Port McNeill and Port Hardy - all had plentiful grocery stores with lots of selection.  Fresh produce was generally available, but ASK what day it arrives.  At Port McNeill, Thursday was the day, so that’s when we did our shopping. 

After Port Hardy there were no major grocery stores until Tofino and southward (Ucluelet, Sooke & Victoria, excluding Bamfield). The small towns on the islands of Desolation Sound and The Broughtons, and the inlets on the West side of the Island had very limited inventory, in spite of what the Cruising Guides tell you.  If you run out of food you will find something to get by but probably not what you were looking for.  ADAPT!  Make something great out of what you find!  Be adventurous!

We found food on the trip to be expensive the further north we traveled and particularly on the west side. Fresh fruit and vegetables, if available, had the greatest price differential to Seattle. An example would be a bag of chopped lettuce, $1:99 at Trader Joe in Seattle, $5:99 in Tofino. The smaller community the bigger pricing surprises.  Salmon, however, was cheap!  A whole side of salmon was $8 in Port Hardy.

The time you take to circumnavigate obviously dictates how you provision the boat. If it is the typical ten days to two weeks on the west side then it will be less of an issue. For us it was over a month so it was longer in time between provisioning points, this took more planning.

Lesson learned:   A well-stocked pantry before you leave is a godsend.  Make or find space for canned staples, cereals, grains and spices.  If there is a particular food item or treat you like, including coffee, bring enough to last the whole trip. Finally, adapt and use what you DO find.  It’s unlikely you’ll starve.

Repair Parts

It’s critical to carry ALL maintenance parts, including oil and water filters, together with some basic repair parts. Purchasing any part once underway is not always convenient or possible in a timely fashion. If the store does have them they will cost up to 50% more than Fisheries Supply in Seattle. The positive news regarding spare parts is that Vancouver Island vendors are geared up for 48-hour delivery from Vancouver outlets.  We put almost 250 hours on the engine so changed oil twice.  We carried parts for six service points. We also carried all fuses, water pump kits and a few electrical parts and an extensive tool kit.

Lesson learned:  Using your boat only on weekends or the annual two- or three-week boat vacation (no matter where you go) is drastically different than being underway and living on your boat for three months, 24-hours a day.  From electronics to the toilet, everything is working harder and stuff is going to stop working or break; it’s going to happen. 

Navigation

The boat is fitted with an electronic chart plotter, integrated radar and instruments. All electronic charts were updated before we left. We also had an IPad with INavX charting which had all US charts which are free and Canadian charts which were not. The Canadians require a boat to carry all paper charts for the route you are traveling. For us, this would have cost over $1,200 for new charts.  Friends, fortunately loaned us their charts having used them on a like trip a few years earlier.  

Cruising guides were invaluable on this trip, giving us information to help in trip planning and researching the next day’s destination.  We found no one Guide did it all. We primarily used Waggoneers for the overview, phone numbers, restaurant’s a little history of the destination. Don & Renee Douglass’ Cruising Guide for detailed information and navigation, and Pacific Yachting Guide for the West Side for arial pictures to help with the overview.

Lesson learned:   We didn’t have or need AIS for this trip. Your cell phone is going to be useless (no cell towers on the West side), so your phone-based navigation apps WON’T WORK. To better understand the area we were visiting, it would have been helpful to have had a Rand McNally road map of the area.  We enjoy walking and hiking, so a trail and hiking guidebooks would have been great to have along. 

Anchorages

For the entire trip we found the bays and inlets we anchored in to have very few boats. At times we were the only boat in a very large bay - something you don’t get to experience every day. This was true for both East & West sides. On the west side north of Tofino this was particularly true due to the remoteness of the coast line. Leaving Port Hardy to Bull Harbor on the north east corner of the island until we arrived in Tofino we saw only half a dozen cruising boats (but lots of fishing boats). We are unsure if the low number of boats was due to the time of year we started our trip or it is always like this.

The Cruising Guides were invaluable for familiarizing us with what the next day’s destination was going to be like. We found that they were very accurate in their navigational details, but often times oversold amenities of the town.  Read the Guides and then trust your eyes and instruments when entering a channel.  Charts don’t always have the most current info and some details, like a rock, might actually be missing. 

Lesson learned:  Just because the Chart – paper or electronic - shows a clear waterway, be cautious.  In every narrow channel or entrance act like the chart is wrong.  Go slow!  Also, ask locals if there are things to watch out for.  Fishermen will tell you about those hidden hazards that aren’t marked. Most anchorages are typically deeper than the Puget Sound so the windless gets to works a lot harder.  Make sure you’ve got adequate chain and rode.  We carried 250’ feet of chain and 150’ of rode and this was enough for the conditions we encountered.

Marinas

We spent nights at sixteen different marinas for a total of thirty nights. This was more than we thought we would and it was more than initially planned. We spent time in these different towns for a variety of reasons. Food re-supply, waiting for weather or parts, washing clothes, and getting a long walk in to learn about the town and just a change of pace.

The marinas had a wide range of amenities from just a place to tie up like Winter Harbour or Walter’s Cove to a full-service marina like Sidney or Victoria. There are also generally three types of marinas:  A federal, city and private marina.  In most places, the federal marina is usually where commercial and local fishing boats tie up.

In Zeballos and Tahsis we went to a marina because the water was deep and nowhere we felt it was safe to anchor. We went to Ladysmith to have the SSB tuned and to learn how to use it before getting to the West side of the Island where we knew we’d need it.  In Sidney and Campbell River we were waiting or searching for spare parts.  At Port McNeill, Port Hardy, Tofino and Ucluelet, we took extra days to wait for improved weather before embarking on the next leg of the journey.

At Echo Bay in the Broughtons, we spent the night at Pierre’s Resort to attend the Saturday night Pig Roast which is a very well attended event, although I don’t think the pig enjoyed it. We also made a trip to Moutcha Bay Resort which wasn’t on the trip plan so we could use a Satellite phone to call our grandson on his birthday.  

The majority of grocery stores in the major towns we visited would deliver to the dock for free or a minimal charge. Some of the grocery stores on the West side remote locations would bring in a grocery list of items from the East side towns if given 24 to 48 hours’ notice but we didn’t use this service to know how well it works.

Not all marina laundry facilities are created equal. Most of the East side, marinas had very nice facilities (expect to pay $5 - $7/load) while on the West side and out on the islands of Desolation Sound and the Broughtons it was mixed.  For this reason we would occasionally use the laundromat in town. Whatever the laundry plan just make sure to carry plenty of Loonies (Canadian dollar coins); you will spend a lot of them.

When checking into the marina, you will be asked if you want to plug into power. Most have city services and the pricing is generally around $5, similar to the Puget Sound. In the more remote locations the power is generator driven and can cost as much as $25 per night!

Lesson Learned: In all probability anyone doing this circumnavigation is going to spend more time in marinas than planned. We knew we would use marinas for all the usual reasons listed above but underestimated the weather wait time. Moorage is one of the bigger costs of the trip costing $40 to $70 per night and for the resorts up $90 per night.  The good news was we had a very favorable exchange rate (about 25 – 30 percent).  The break at each of these stops was well worth the money and time spent but we did notice that after three nights we were really ready to move on.

For a full list of marinas and cruise itinerary click on the link in the sidebar of this Blog called “VI Itinerary”

Communication

For us communicating with friends and family, including grandchildren, was a big deal. Cell phone data plans were not only expensive, but inadequate.  We don’t make many phone calls so we purchased a plan feature (AT&T) that enabled us to send unlimited text messages for $60 a month.  We could generally use it on the East side in the major towns, it worked fine.  Once we were away from these locations we had sketchy to no connectivity. The west side of the island had even less cell coverage. We depended heavily on the two onboard radios, VHF for short range and SSB for long distance email and weather. Additionally we used a GPS satellite transmitter called Spot (findmespot.com) to daily let family and friends (10-person maximum) know where we were and that all was well.

One of the means of communication we had planned on using was the internet.  All small towns advertised internet service at the marinas (for a fee) or “free” at the local coffee shop.  This turned out to be high-speed dial up, not the high-speed fiber-optic cable service we’re accustomed to having at home. 

From Port Hardy to Hot Springs Cove just north of Tofino we had dial up type connectivity in the towns we visited and that’s if we could get connected. This section of the Island represented 20 days of being off the grid:  A length of time we hadn’t anticipated being out of touch with family.  We knew that communication was going to be a challenge but didn’t fully grasp that the cell coverage and internet would be so limited.

Lesson learned:  The SSB radio became our work horse for communications. The Spot worked well for giving people a daily location.  Its weakness is that it’s not a two way communication device.  Satellite is the way to go.  Delorme, a competitor of SPOT, has a device called InReach but provides two-way text via satellite. The monthly subscription is comparable to the cell text package we bought.

Weather

I once went to an offshore presentation and one of the audience members asked the presenter what was the most important piece of equipment on the boat. His answer was, “Whatever it is that keeps you awake at night.”

For me, that would be weather and the ability to get accurate reports. There are some incredible weather apps that you can down load to your IPhone or IPad. They have more information than the average boater could ever use and some even provide modeling capabilities. No cell or internet coverage, no weather apps. 

We listened to the weather every evening and again in the morning before we pulled anchor using the VHF radio. This was sometimes difficult on the North West side of the Island due to the location of the mountains and transmitting station. The SSB gave us the capability of down loading a weather report for our location and we used this service for the entire west side.

We found two things to be true:  (1) The Canadian weather reports are often times inaccurate and overstated; (2) The Cruising Guides state that the weather on the west side always comes from the North West blowing the boat down Island. Our experience on this trip was the wind almost always blew from the South East and was on the nose of the boat. 

Lesson learned:  When off the grid, we need an additional weather source to support the VHF- and SSB- generated information. Sirius radio offers not only music and news it also has a weather package and the system is a subscription Satellite based service.

Safety

This doesn’t fall into what keeps you awake at night because from a safety point of view everything could keep you awake. To enhance our onboard safety, carried two radios -VHF & SSB - both of which have automatic transmit capabilities and a Spot and EPERB.  The SSB can transmit on three frequencies simultaneously by just lifting the red cover and pressing the button. Spot and an EPERB are both Satellite-based emergency transmitters. We also carried a sea anchor which is like a large parachute on the end of 600’ of rope and a six-person life raft.   We also carried a medical kit approved for being within 24-hours of medical assistance.

Lesson learned:  This equipment is like the airbag in your car. You most likely never think about them, are happy you have them, and never want to see them deployed. The above safety list falls into the same category.  Do the things that won’t put you into a position of needing them.

Overall

For us this was an epic journey giving us lasting memories of one of the most impressive cruising grounds on the planet. From a boat, we had the opportunity to see a part of the North West in a way that few people do:  islands, mountains, small inlets and towns.  We saw fishing communities and a life style on the Island we never knew existed until this summer trip.  We also discovered we really enjoy long-range, long-term cruising, and would really like to have another trip of this type in the future.  Yes, my wife agrees.