Quote: "If I wanted to make a straight run at it what would be the optimal time to depart?"
We must certainly give you high marks for tenacity :-)! Tenacity is a trait that stands any sailorman in good stead, and is an essential component of any competent skipper's personality. But as has been hinted at in numerous ways on several different threads, if tenacity isn't backed up by knowledge and experience it deteriorates into foolhardiness.
You are familiar with the aphorism "Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment" So let's go around the mulberry bush one more time: You need to go out in your home waters and exercise you judgment, bad as some of us think it is, because that will give you the experience that MAY enable you to develop good judgment! When you've seen the elephant, we might show you the Bengal tiger ;0)! Whether it is one animal or the other you have an assignation with, creep up on it slowly and quietly. And then get the Hell outta there before the beast gets you!
To answer your specific question: The OPTIMAL time to depart
Vancouver is AFTER you've done that. The calendar has nothing to do with it till then!
As I've said before: Be systematic. As I see it, here is a “path” to follow:
1) Play with the
Grampian out in
English Bay beginning now. In the spring, when it's blowing 12 balmy knots from SE, but no more, take her over to Degnen Bay. The distance from Jericho Beach to Gabriola Passage is about 30 miles as I
recall. That will take you the entire day in a G23, because you are likely to have a set of 2 knots on the beam crossing the Strait. Unless you know how to compensate for that, your distance over the ground is gonna be closer to 50 miles. You cannot count on more than 4 knots through the
water in a G23, so there's a 12 hour day for you! And you still have to go in through the pass where the tidal
current may well be 6 knots and the whirlpools are enough to set a cockleshell like a G23 spinning like a whirligig. After that, you still have to get your hook down. Mind the reef on the souwest side of Degnen. Often it doesn't show on the water's surface. It'll rip you centreboard out if you have it down. It's gonna be a long day :-)
2) Once those kinda things are outta the way, get a REAL boat, and fit her out with the ESSENTIALS. We can talk later about what they are, but suffice it to say that a vane bolted to the transom of a G23 is likely to rip the transom right out of her if you are hit by a grown-up wave at sea. One boat, among the many that would do the trick for you, as it has done for other people including some that you might meet at Cooper's on Granville Island, is this:
VANCOUVER 27 sailboat specifications and details on sailboatdata.com
When she and the ESSENTIAL
equipment have been paid for, squirrel away fifty grand for a “cruising fund”. You'll need it. A replacement
engine is fifteen grand. A new suit of
sails is as much by the time you've paid the freight to Polynesia :-). A new standing rig for TP set the PO back five and thirty grand. That was before the
sails.
NOW, but not before, you'll be in a position to consider doing what you are proposing, and doing it safely.
And please don't forget that once a
skipper acquires a reputation for foolhardiness, he'll never find competent crew. Competent sailors are too smart to ship out with a foolhardy/inexperienced skipper!
All the best :-)!
TP
Linear Mode
Recent Discussions