After a few days on dry land I decided to head over to Ganges, Saltspring Island and Deb said she would meet there for the weekend.
I finished up work, cast off around 11:30 and enjoyed a great sail to Ganges with 13 knot winds which pushed Treylya to 6.6 knots. I’m still a little shell shocked about last weekend so a nice brisk sail was comforting… The evening at Ganges was beautiful and there weren’t many boats around.
Sue and James showed up on Friday. They were on the tail end of their holiday week sailing and it was nice to have company at the dock.
Deb joined us Friday evening and we went up to the pub for dinner.
We retired back on Hounds Hollow and enjoyed a late night with a few cocktails and made plans to head over to Montague Harbour in the morning.
We woke the next morning to a beautiful day and Deb and I had coffee and enjoyed a great breakfast and coffee.
James and Sue had a few things to do in town so Deb and I cast off around 09:30 and said we’d catch up with them later.
We enjoyed a slow sail out of the harbour and towards Galiano Island. As we rounded the Northwest tip of Prevost Island we thought we could see a few spouts of water near a small collection of boats… Whales! After a few breaches we could see that it was a pod of Killer Whales… Excitement grew as we sailed towards them the and within 100 meters we took down the jib and slowly drifted towards the pod of Orca whales. As we drifted closer it became obvious that we were experiencing a feeding frenzy. I assumed they were feeding on salmon that they were chasing to the surface. Within a few minutes we drifted pretty close to the whales and the large one circled us a few times and swam directly under the boat to check us out. How exciting… We kept watching for a few more minutes and as I started up the motor to make some distance between us and the pod, a large bloody mass bobbed to the surface about 20 meters off the boat and the whales converged upon it. The blob was huge, too large to be a salmon or other fish. Perhaps it was a sea lion or another whale? We slowly chugged out of there after a thrill of a lifetime…
In retrospect I do remember a couple of smaller whales or porpoises swimming near the killer whale pod so perhaps the killer whales were jumping on those smaller whales to drown them??? I remember hearing that this is a popular tactic Orcas use to kill other whales.
We continued on to Montague Harbour and tied up to a mooring buoy in the park. We went for a walk in the park and enjoyed hanging on the beach for a few hours while the sun was high in the sky and recounted our blessings over the past few weeks. Life’s good!
James and Sue showed up after a few hours and we recounted our experience to them later over a few drinks. We enjoyed dinner on Hounds Hollow and the evening slipped away. The next morning we set sail back to Sidney and managed to sail most of the way.
Day 1: April 7, 2016
12:20 – 17:24 (05:04)
Distance: 20.7 nm
Sail Time: 03:09
Engine Time: 01:55
Day 2: April 9, 2016
09:30 – 12:08 (02:38)
Distance: 8.5 nm
Sail Time: 01:05
Engine Time: 01:33
Day 3: April 10, 2016
09:40 – 13:53 (04:13)
Distance: 19.1 nm
Sail Time: 02:58
Engine Time: 01:15