How Offshore Sailing is like Riding a Bike
Prologue:
Saturday. September 18th. 2023
No more to prepare
Alarm set for 3 hours and
17 minutes
3:30 in the morning. The alarm blares. A flurry of trying to find my phone causes a slimy deluge of the last 3 days to seep through my cracked eyelids, and 7pm last night I was buying a set matched of bike lights that I stupidly didn’t own yet, and slamming 2 discipline’s and 3 weather’s worth of garments in my bike bags.
The bottle of baileys and the talking Winston Churchill 1/10th scale action figure never looked so enticing. But you don’t got a choice, do you?
Hour 2 hits and it’s… still dark. There’s nothing but many ugly shopping malls and shopping centers in the US of A. It’s just the same thing for a while. And a while longer. And a bit longer. Until it isn’t, and there’s just a road and the out of bounds forest and the occasional car. The first rays of sunlight are peeking over the purple hazy mountains set to snowcone blue billows in the sky. I stop in a driveway to put on my little rain jacket, and for the next 20 minutes the fog grips my arms frustratedly. I’m not going to get cold enough to get sick, but it is a brisk sampler of discomfort. I always wonder when I start a long ride if I’m getting soft, that this time it’ll be too much. Then I deem that I am, in fact, getting soft, before having to simply overcome what lies ahead of me.
May. 2023. The intrepid crew of SV Karma, Liam and Heather, begin their adventures by leaving Friday Harbor. They sailed north up the inside passage up as far as the Alaskan Border, then back down via Haida Gwaii to Vancouver Island. From here, a rather extraordinary series of events took place, where Karma’s colic-y engine threw a fit, leaving the boat stranded in lagoon cove. With some complications, they were able to sail, motor, and mozy a trail down the coast of Vancouver Island before stopping into Ucluelet. Now, the internal catastrophe of the Yanmar could no longer be avoided. They sourced, negotiated, and purchased an engine located outside the city of Vancouver. By the magic of a well connected world, a marvelous aunt and uncle were able to transport it up the coast, across the water, and instead of starting their vacation 40km north in Tofino, they took a left at the T-intersection to Uclulet and delivered the engine down to the dock. With patience, determination, and maybe a nice sailor’s sized satchel of beer, they replaced the engine whilst bobbing around in the bay.
Farm fields. Cow dung. A trail to a town. I stop at a silly little diner at 7am for an omelette at the counter. The fog outside the window resembles the sleepless fog inside my glassy eyes, and I stare into the mug, un-appetized by everything, knowing I must eat something. With the engine replaced, and over 100 days of cruising in Canada completed, Karma was ready to get southward. Some of the most precarious sailing in the northern hemisphere is the mouth of the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The mixing of arctic waters and warmed waters of the Puget sound converge over a long unbroken chain of unprotected coves, leaving few sanctuaries anchor or bail along the sheer cliffs of the Olympic Peninsula and the Oregon coast. To avoid unpredictable changes in waves, one must sail sufficiently far off said coast, lining up the course within the available 5 day bandwidth of the weather’s permission, and complete the stretch before the window of opportunity leads to uncertainty. The pass must be done in one shot.
To stay in tune with changing conditions, navigation, and avoid collisions with other ships, a continual pair of eyes must be on the horizon, day and night. A crew of two would have to stretch their resources thin and maintain a high level of alertness to rotate watch throughout the night. To circadian dismay, this is done in 2 to 3 hour rotations, with extra sleep catchup penciled in. While it is possible, it would be uncomfortable, isolating, and unsettling. Bu, a crew of three? An extra set of deckhands. An extra set of mess-hall hands. Each watch is followed by two others, doubling everyone’s rest for no extra individual cost. Everyone benefits.
Uclulet is but an adorable fishing town at the end of a single road, cape cul-de-sac. Who would be willing to make a trek to a tiny island town? How would they get there? How would they get back? Enter: The little brother Contingency.
The plan: Tristan will ride his bike up to Uclulet, board SV Karma, and sail into the ocean over 5 days down to Eureka, California. The following morning, Tristan will reassemble the bike, dinghy-dink over to land, ride the remaining 320 miles to San Francisco, pack the bike away in a box and fly back to Seattle. Karma gets a Cabinboy, Tristan gets a story.
The catch (no pun intended): minimal sailing experience. He has a week’s notice, as 5 day window foretold a single day in advanced is a weather windows solely good enough for the length of time the trip itself:. Oh, and yea, there’s only 2 deep sea life jackets aboard, so you need to bring one… as well as that book I left you, a Garmin in-reach, a few clothes that were sitting around, and, oh yea, a brand spankin’ new Milwaukee Angle grinder. That’s been ordered and will arrive at your home soon enough, and once it gets there, there’s no turning it down.”
With giddy anticipation, a backpack full of not-my-belongings, a window presented itself in mid-September. Upon return, reflection, synthesis, and a bit too long to marinate, I feel uniquely qualified to draw a parallel between two disparate voyaging professions: that of the endurance bikepacker, and the open ocean sailor.
Part 1: Adventure awaits
But first, I have to get there. That’s what I’m doing at 7:30 on September 16th 2023. As I wolf down the remaining bite of breakfast, something about the plastic fumes of the artificial swiss cause a noxious chemical reaction with the calcified Pb&j rock in my stomach. I panic head to the bathroom and throw up my whole $ 14 breakfast, more inconvenienced than sick. That’s a great start. The fog and smog hover over like a smudged sedan’s sunroof with the clouds splitting the grey like ripped paper. The frontage road next to the I-5 calunka-calunkas in concrete panels in a polyrhythmic chant against my pedaling and breathing. I’m riding probably too hard, but how can you pace yourself in an adventure? I haven’t ridden more than maybe 30 miles this season, having bolstered it on nothing more than a fixie in the city. But I’m about 60 miles in, both feeling pretty rough with the kind of scrunched and furrowed eyebrows that worsen any headache, and feeling excited. Feeling like moving. I love moving. And then I stop at a gas station and I’m so glad to be stationary, I must not be cut out for this. But I have places to be. I have a boat to catch. So a plastic pastry and snickers later I’m back to it, and it nothing much can matter much at all, I’m on a bike!
I pause at the adorable Mount Vernon grocery to sit and eat an ice cream cone. I cross the cute bridge head towards the fields. I’ve been through these exact roads before to see the Islands, but to get here on my bike makes my heart happy. The roads around Allen give me all the joy of what it must be to be a farmyard pig, gleefully in my own silly stinky little pasture. I can’t help but hear the soundtrack of what must be the Rolling Stones or Creedence Clearwater Revival in the wide shot. I’m really cranking now.
Then the road closes off and funnels into a dense thicket that swims out of the fields and into the hills like a tissue in an updraft. This is Chuckanut, the feel and the shape of roads I truly call home. The climbing grades are enough that you can really bind your wheels to and push with with a great rhythm, and the descents are winding and subtle, where with timed tucks and a loosening of fingers of apprehension on the brakes, you can truly fly. I never let the speed duck under 18 miles an hour on the climbs, imagining I’m chasing the sleek wheels of Ana Van Der Bregen or Tadej. This is why I ride my bike. I was just having too much damn fun to take many pictures. Welcome to Bellingham. I stop for longer than anticipated at a grocery store. I hop back on my bike and I run the mental calculations of just how much I need to keep doing to make this 7:30 Ferry. I’m on schedule… I’ve got hours to spare. Maybe I’m too on schedule. I recognize the fountain, and the diner, and realize I’m on my Great Aunt Eleanor’s street. I got the whole day, I might as well use the whole day. I waltz up, ring the doorbell, pause, linger, stand, and just as I’m about to leave, it opens to both of our surprise. I sit inside for coffee and Biscoffs and chat with Aunt Kathryn and Great Aunt Elanor for exactly one hour. I can’t tell if I’m glad to be taking a respite or just itching itching itching to get going. I bid adieu, and begin what will devolve into an ugly stretch of dusty freeways with 18 wheelers. It gets noticeably less fun the closer to a hub of industry one gets. I merge across an empty 6 lanes to take the non-truck exit and pedestrian border crossing. I’m greeted by Canadian kindness and diplomatic terseness for a rightfully-skeptical questioning. I can’t tell which would be better, a shaky believable answer “I’m just camping,” or, “No, I’m not a drug mule, no, who I’m meeting does not have an address here in Canada as they’re on a boat, I’m staying for a day because I’m leaving the country we’re sailing to California. No, I don’t know if there’s a customs office there.” With disgruntled curiosity, I’m allowed to pass. It’s just suburbs on the other side with a big 3 lane highway each way. A typical “non-fun.” I turn towards the hills. Out of the saddle always feels like dancing. There, coming out of the roundabout, on the sidewalk is a little girl with a plastic table stacked with beanie babies. To this day, I failed to acquire a mascot for this ride. If I had just stopped… If I had just stopped…
I glide over the bridge, and then to the paths that meander directly through the city. Monorails, busses, other bikes, pedestrians, bus stops, all clatter around me as Canada’s top tier bike paths undulate in all directions around me, wider, thinner, longer, shorter, straiter, bendier, where all I can do is huff and puff. An imperial century added to a metric century still doesn’t get me all the way there.
Bridge Number 2 begins at the almighty Stanley Park. As the sun begins to dwindle, I’m really beginning to feel the effort dwindle within me. It’s been a long day. I’m many hours deep. Sometimes, if your heartrate sits above 120bpm for 14 hours straight you get this feeling you could suck air through a brick at the bottom of a pool.
I am swept away from the city. It begins to look like Swiss Italian Riveras with the aire of maple syrup and evergreens caressing the fog. I’m in a neighborhood that just won’t seem to end nor make up its mind whether it’s too high or too low. As the road bends up towards the rocks, it dives, ducks and dodges back again. Finally, departing the last marina on the rocks, a switchback hairpin hides a secret veering entrance that pokes into the road that becomes the road that becomes the ferry waiting line. With one last careening fell swoop into the cobblestone strip mall, I have arrived: Horeshoe Bay Ferry Terminal. 189.9 miles from my front door, an ensconced Pirate cove tucked away in the distant North. It certainly feels like the gates to an adventure, the Wandering Rocks at the edge of the Elusian Isles.
Feeling rather smug, I go to buy my 7pm ticket with a half hour to spare. The attendant, with resignation, tells me there IS no 7pm ferry, but the next one is at 10:30. That 3:30AM start was moot. I was never in a rush. I was never cutting it close. Better this side of poor planning than the other… In equal parts livid meltdown and humorous chuckle, I breathe a sigh of relief there’s nothing I can do. Nothing I can do now but wait. I go to the bar that overlooks the bay, leave my bike against the railing and plop outside. I plug in my lights, plug my phone into the portable charger, take some notes, and revel in the restorative power of poutine. It is here I would like to propose here I have the unofficial World record for furthest distance a Milwaukee angle grinder has been pedaled on a bicycle. 189.9 miles in a Day from Seattle Washington to Horseshoe Bay BC. En route, I believe I have also smashed the one day record. The 24 the hour record. And hell, while we’re at it, invariably and inevitably, the 2 day record. Anyone who wants to challenge me please, please write me directly. Iron sharpens Iron.
I settle up, walk out front. A pair of blokes: Jackets, puffies, beards, scruffy, one bald, one not, beers in paper bags, sillies in surplus, yammerings and giggles galore give me a nod. I see their matching AACF Buffalo Bill shirts. I ask:
“What are you guys traveling for?”
“Oh! Football!”
“The Bills played”
“Good on the Buffalo Bills, eh”
Like Cosmic Siamese twins, they always respond in pairs, chirping back and forth. Birds on a wire. Todd and Tom, (of course) they are:
How’d you do?” I ask.
“Oh it was a close one!”
“Close one!”
“It was tied up till double overtime and a field goal”
“Didn’t think it was gonna go our way!”
“No way”
“But it did”
“Sure did! eh”
“Fuckin’ field goal!” - Todd emphatically finishes
“Just taking the ferry over for the day?” “Just the game!” “The game!” sips beer and nods “Where you headed?” “This yours, eh?” gesturing towards my bike “Yes, I’m heading to Ucluelet”
“Oh shit!”
“Shit!”
“That’s gotta be…”
“180..”
“200 kilometers!”
“Yea just about”
“I’d give you a ride if I was goin’ that far”
“Oh Tom sure as shit would, eh”
“Sure as shit would”
“But I’m just headin’ to Nainaimo!”
“We’d give-ya a ride there too, eh!”
“Sure would!”
“Thank you” I say,
“but I’m good. I already came further than that today” “Where’d you start?” “I left Seattle this morning.”
Todd’s eyes light up as Tom scrunches his brow and turns his head to look at Todd for the first pause in the entire exchange. Then Tom points, still looking:
“It’s fuckin’ Lance Armstrong”
“I bet he got two nuts though!”
And then they burst out laughing like the gas station attendants on the Bikini Bottom County line, a pair of archetypical tricksters at the mouth of the Wandering rocks. I get the faint feeling as some landlubber I may have made my first seaward encounter with a story that’s as old as the Maritime itself. I am not the first one to have met these folks in this weary state.
Eventually it comes time to go through the clambering gates of the Ferry, where cyclists and pedestrians are staged like those salmon in the fish cannon through the industrial loud zoo of the cacophonous loading of the car docks above and beside us. I lock up my bike, walk upstairs, plug my phone at a table, and get in line for a burger right behind Tom.
The BC ferry system is a shining light of what a public transport system should be. Enormous, comfy, accommodating, full breakfast, full dinner, like a cross between a floating cruise ship, a hotel, and a train station all wrapped together. From my anecdotal understanding, it is somewhat of a point of national pride that the BC ferries are so extensive, with systems that reach tiny coves, enormous crossings. The trans Canadian highway 1 includes the ferry ride from Horseshoe bay to Nanaimo, “With a fleet of 35 boats, ranging from major vessels to small ferries, offering 25 routes and performing on average over 500 sailings daily, BC Ferries welcomed over 22.6 million passengers and 9.6 million vehicles for the 2023-2024 fiscal year.” I sleep some. I mostly stare out the window wondering what the hell I’m doing here.
I wish I could say my day was over, but it wasn’t. I nod at Todd on my way to my bike, undo her from the ferry ramp exit and pedal into the night. It’s almost exactly10 kilometers from the ferry terminal to the RV campsite I know of. I don’t really feel it in my legs anymore, frankly, it’s just free at this point. I smile and take a goofy selfie, and kick myself I’m not going to circle the parking lot for 15 minutes to hit 200 miles.
I duck under the gate at the campsite and silently scour for an empty spot. There’s none. I make it to the water where there’s a boat ramp and a wide gravel parking lot next to it. I scuttle over on the corner on the downside of the hill, I cook my stupid meal, and brush my stupid teeth, lumbering around in the dark like a stupid little lactic acid ridden raccoon.
196 miles.
1 border.
2 new friends.
3am to 3am.
Day 2: Can’t Stop the Rain
Ah. rise and shine. With a quick big-dog stretch, sun rays swinging into my sleepy morning eyes, I had but the gentle, and tickling feeling of perhaps a catastrophic railroad accident, or perhaps a light femur-ectomy. Whatever the case, all I could check for was a pulse, because any other internal signs of life would have been failing. Maybe that’s the first adage about long bike trips. The first day you have to do it twice feels harder to start than it is to continue. You can rally. Your body knows better than you do. I walk into the camp office and tell them I didn’t have a spot, I just stayed on the path next to the water, but I’d like to come back sometime so I’d like to pay. I should’ve just left, but I’ll spend this good Karma later. I’ll need it.
I roll into the town of Nanaimo with one thing on my mind. Here’s a real insider trick of the trade. After thousands of miles in consultation, I can attest the ultimate pickings of distance bikepacking foods would have to be: the McDonalds McGriddle. Salty, fatty, sweet, warm, dense, indulgent, heavily available, good at most temperatures, and $ 8 Canadian (which is like 2 real dollars if I remember correctly) Just buy 4 along with 4 chicken sausage biscuits, scarf down 2 of each, toss the rest in your frame bag and eat them every half hour for the first 3 hours whilst you suck your entire 2 litre camelback bladder dry. Less than $ 20, over 4000 calories, and it makes you feel that smug success of having convinced mum to stop on the way home.
I get a flat, stop on the sidewalk, flip my bike over straight into some dog shit. I yell expletives. I throw a banana peel into the bushes, crack out the Dawn dish soap, which is great for cleaning dishes, bikes, chains, levers, bars, of grease and gunk, but also, excrement. For a long time it was just roads and gas stations, but the Canadian mountains and swarms of evergreen trees in a pacific northwestern fog is enticing company on a solo trip. A sudden turn emerges and I’m on a fireroad and gravel path. Despite my 28mm road tires and high road gearing, designed for light bikes on smooth surfaces, loaded bike bags on a rutted and rocky gravel trail wasn’t much of an upset. It was quiet!
