A little dinghy and a fear of whirlpools

Insidiously, the current increases until it no longer is a smooth, laminar sweep, becoming a boiling, crashing, upwelling maelstrom that looks exactly like a fast-falling whitewater mountain stream. White water is full of air, and less buoyant than green water. Boats float lower. Rudders lose effectiveness. Propellers lose bite. When diminished buoyancy and lessoned control are combined with strong currents, standing waves, deep whirlpools and boils of upwelling water, very quickly you can have a recipe for disaster.

So read some of the sailing directions for my bucket-list trip off the grid, way up into Desolation Sound, to deliver a Pacific Seacraft 34 south from Refuge Cove, off West Redondo Island, which is above the Strait of Georgia and just west of the Coast Mountains (8,550 feet) on the dramatic western coast of British Columbia.
I’d also read about the Kwakiutl Indian culture and their now forbidden hallucinatory potlatches. And some stories of cannibalism. But that was a long, long time ago, right?

I mean, really, how bad could it be?

So I flew to Seattle, climbed aboard a tiny, well-worn floatplane, sat behind the pilot – who had even more miles on him than the plane – stuck in my earplugs, and off we went. We headed north at 126 knots, over the San Juan Islands, on to Nanaimo to clear customs, and then to Refuge Cove. My biggest concern in the air was a heart attack. Not mine. The pilot’s. So, with rapt attention, I decided to learn how to fly by watching him. During the landing into Nanaimo, I watched him spin this strange worn-metal wheel by his seat, crank a lever that looked like an old hand-brake from a Model T, and tap the tired instruments on the dash, but, in the end, I would have bet against myself landing that thing, especially with a dead pilot leaning against me.

I gave up on trying to become a qualified pilot, and on the last leg began to wonder if my old pal Peter and his boat would actually be there when we arrived. He’d been sailing the Strait of Georgia, mostly alone, for about 65 days, and, last I heard when he was in text range, he was on track to meet me at Refuge Cove. “If I don’t make it,” his last text said, “I hear there’s an old shack there, out back behind the trading post, where an old native woman lives with a bottle of hooch. Wait there with her.”

I thought of texting Peter about the whirlpools, and the Kwakiutl, but figured it was too late.

\All was well, though. For about nine days, anyway. We circumnavigated West and East Redonda islands, passed through Desolation Sound, and headed south down the Malaspina Straight along Texada Island. The beauty was astounding. The silence at night was deafening; there was absolutely NO sound, and in that void was just a strange buzzing in our ears.

At each anchorage, I climbed into what had to be world’s smallest dinghy with world’s longest oars, and managed to explore under waterfalls falling from 300- to 400-foot cliffs, which landed in water with depths of 400-plus feet just off the shore. I never sensed danger. Never saw the whirlpools. Didn’t meet a single Kwakiutl.
But then, it happened.

It happened in a seemingly serene place called Plumper Cove. Peter wanted to take a nap, so I carefully slipped into the dinghy and headed for my row. There was a romantic looking double-ended ketch upwind of us, so I set out to investigate. When I rowed around the bow, the design seemed familiar. When I rowed closer, I saw she was a little rough around the edges, as was her owner, a friendly Canadian with long hair and a beard.

“Goin’ for a row, are ya? Eh?”

“Yes. I love your vessel; she looks like a cross between a Westsail in the bow and an Atkin Ingrid in the stern sections.”
The man looked at me and smiled. “You know your boats. Why don’t you come aboard, eh?”

I looked up at the high-sided hull. No ladder. Somehow I pulled myself aboard. We chatted for a while. She’d been abandoned for seven years when he found her, up in Nanaimo, and he’d bought her for five thousand. We chatted about the projects he’d completed, and then it was time for me to go; Peter would be getting up from his nap. I looked down – down and down – to that tiny dinghy.

“Think you’ll make it, eh?” my new friend said.

I didn’t. Stepping just in the wrong spot, I flipped the tiny dinghy, and was now swimming next to it. The Canadian looked down at me, nonplussed. “What you going to do now, eh?”

Finally, with him pulling on the bowline, and me flipping the dinghy – then using an old bucket he’d handed me – I was back aboard the tiny craft. One oar was still aboard, and I was able to paddle to the other. I headed back to Peter’s boat, pulled my sodden self aboard – complete with drenched blue jeans, sneakers, sweatshirt and hat – and sat down in the cockpit.

Peter was just getting up. He looked at me and cocked his head. “Looks as if you had a little adventure while I was sleeping, Dave,” he said, smiling. I was going to tell him about trying to outrun some Kwakiutls, then getting caught in a dreaded whirlpool, then….

Instead, all I said was, “Capsized your dinghy, Pete. Sorry.”