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One of many sea caves in Barkley Sound.
Right: Bob Spanfelner walks a perfect sand beach at Rugged Point. |
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Taking the water at Hot Springs Cove near Tofino. |
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JUNE/JULY CRUISE, PAGE 3:
Sea Caves in Barkley Sound & the Run Home to Seattle;
Change and Challenges on the Coast
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In your opinion, what is the single best destination on the West Coast?
That's not a fair question, because the entire area outshines nearly anything else. The best of the bunch, though, is Barkley Sound. Barkley Sound has the most variety, and the most fascinating gunkholing of anyplace I have seen.
We took the dinghy -- a 10½-foot Avon RIB -- around Fleming Island, and found the shores riddled with sea caves. We turned the outboard motor off and rowed into the mouth of one of them. It was probably 20 feet high and 15 feet wide, with a gravel floor that reached up and back into the darkness. Indians used to put their dead into bentwood boxes and hide the boxes in sea caves. We were told that if you know where to look, you can find those boxes today, but we didn't try.
 We found several perfect sand beaches. We saw rock islets that left us speechless with their raw beauty. Barkley Sound is quite a place.
You have to be careful, though. Barkley Sound is filled with rocks, and not all of them are marked by kelp. The rocks are charted, but you have to pay attention. Very close attention.
Before the interview, you told me the run home was probably the best you'll ever
have. Would you elaborate?
Our plan was to leave Bamfield, near the mouth of Barkley Sound, at 0600, when there was enough daylight to see, but before the sea breeze came in. With luck we would make it all the way to Port Townsend for the night. If the sea breeze came in too soon, we could put in at Sooke, or Becher Bay, or Victoria, which are charming alternatives.
We had 3-4 hours of fog, which slowed us to 8½ knots -- love the radar, GPS and autopilot -- and the rest of the time we ran in essentially flat water at 16½ knots. The big diesels didn't miss a beat. We hit Point Wilson at 3:30 in the afternoon. With small tides and no wind, the Point Wilson rip took the day off. Forget Port Townsend, we cried, on to Seattle! Actually, our destination was Winslow, across Puget Sound from downtown Seattle. Bob's wife Delia was waiting there aboard their Olson 40 sailboat.
We touched the dock in Winslow at 6:10 p.m: Bamfield to Winslow in 12 hours and 10 minutes. I'm willing to be lucky, but it'll be a long time before I have a run like that one.
You spent eight weeks in all, and covered a lot of coastline. Do you find enough
changes or new information to justify it?
Changes? Oh, change is constant. At every stop something had changed. New showers, the fuel dock closed, an astonishing new restaurant. We learn things we missed on earlier visits.
At first, when we were building the book, I concentrated on getting into as many anchorages as I could, and reporting on all the towns, marinas, settlements and outposts. I think I did a good job. The Waggoner has become the most popular boating guidebook in the Northwest. Everywhere we go, we see boaters using the Waggoner.
 Now we are filling in the gaps. We're trying anchorages we had to pass by before, and we've found some dandies. They'll be in next year's book. We're getting to know the people along the way. Their lives are so different from city lives.
Out in the bush, people are concerned with diesel generators for household electricity, log salvage, hand-logging, keeping deer out of the vegetable garden and wolves away from the pet cat. They are saddened when a fawn goes missing and is never seen again. Mail comes by float plane once, twice, three times a week, depending on where the people live. The supply boat comes on Thursdays. A Barkley Sound lodge owner's son drowned off Cape Beale during a winter storm four years ago. That summer one of their daughters' boyfriend drowned while fishing.
At Port Neville, on the Inside Passage, we saw a beautiful home built of logs that had been winched up a steep hill from the beach. It was not a motorized winch; it was a vintage Armstrong model. A large-diameter geared cheek, a hand-cranked small-diameter gear to turn the big gear, and a small-diameter drum for the wire rope. The windows came up the hill that way, on a wagon attached to the wire rope. The woodstove, the refrigerator, the big propane tank. Bags of cement for concrete. Gravel was collected and hauled by wheelbarrow. A well with hand-pump stood in the field. The fireplace and chimney were made of rocks they picked up on the property, held together with concrete made from the cement and sand they hauled up the hill, mixed with gravel brought in by wheelbarrow.
The wife is an artist, Peggy Sowden. We bought one of her paintings.
Do things change? Absolutely. Do we meet people and learn things that will make the next edition of the Waggoner more timely, more informative, and richer? I think so. Yes. Definitely.
Thanks, Bob.
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