Description: We travel so that chance may derange our plans
Late May 2013
Sailing into a large contemporary city is a wonderful and rather anachronistic thrill. It can also feel a bit daunting, for contemporary urban ports like Vancouver contain many sorts of obstacles, challenges and marine traffic, from kayaks to tankers to float planes, all moving at different speeds and in different directions. Since we’d as yet not sailed into Vancouver, we chose a day of rather calm winds and seas for our trip, looked over our charts and cruising guides, and carefully consulted the 2013 edi
We set out early Friday morning to transit Active Pass, a narrow winding strait of swift currents and regular ferry traffic that separates Galiano and Mayne Islands, and allows passage into and out of the Strait of Georgia or the Salish Sea, as it is also known, after its first inhabitants. From there, we would angle towards the mainland, crossing the large ship traffic in the shipping lanes. We’d skirt the shallows of Roberts, Sturgeon and Spanish Banks, which lie quite (deceptively! surprisingly! beware!)