News About The Greer Family
May 28-30, 2001: Our First Passage
In the Mediterranean, passages of twenty to thirty hours are common. While we have more than twenty year's experience traveling up and down the West Coast of Canada, we have never made a passage of more than twelve hours. To test our passage ability and to improve many of our seamanship skills we hired a CYA certified offshore instructor for a three-day cruise on our existing boat White Dragon.
Larry Young
Larry Young is an experienced offshore sailing instructor who has been up and down the West Coast. We really enjoyed the three days that we spent together. We worked together on numerous seamanship skills. Many of these skills we have already learned over the years, but our confidence increased by practicing them on our existing boat.
White Dragon
We wanted to do our first passage on a boat that we knew well. After eleven years and close to five thousand nautical miles on White Dragon, we thought that we knew both the boat and the West Coast well. But we had never done a twenty-four hour passage on White Dragon, so this was our chance to set up a watch system and do a passage in an area that we knew with a boat that we understood.
Passage Making
Passage making is different than day sailing because it forces you to implement a watch system. For short-handed sailing, we decided on a watch system with short watches. We broke the day down into the following watches:- 1200 - 1600 (4 hours): Starboard
- 1600 - 2000 (4 hours): Port
- 2000 - 2300 (3 hours): Starboard
- 2300 - 0200 (3 hours): Port
- 0200 - 0500 (3 hours): Starboard
- 0500 - 0800 (3 hours): Port
- 0800 - 1200 (4 hours): Starboard
Using this system insures that each day you stand a different watch. This is important to provide variety and sleep patterns for the watch keepers. For our passage, Karalee did the Starboard watch and David did the Port one. While off-watch, the main goal was to brief the next watch then head to bed to try and get some sleep. When things were going well you could spend about 50% of your off-watch time sleeping. Rough conditions, meal times, extra navigation, or other issues reduce the sleeping time. In the Mediterranean we'll have to do passages with the children on board which will provide us with more challenges.
Our First Passage
Our first twenty-four hour passage took us from Secret Cove on the Sunshine Coast around Texada Island, across Georgia Straight to the Comox Bar (arriving at nightfall), down the inside passage between Denman Island and Vancouver Island, across Georgia Straight to Sangster Light, and from there home to Vancouver around Bowen Island. The passage provided a wide variety of challenges including rocks, sand bars, oyster farms, a fishing boat at anchor without lights, seaweed, seals, and dolphins.The first ten hours provided us with the longest sail that we have ever had on White Dragon. We sailed continuously from Secret Cove, around the top of Texada Island, and over to the Comox Bar. The entry into Comox let us test on night navigation skills with lights. And the crossing back across Georgia Straight tested our ability to watch for shipping traffic while working the wind to maximize our sailing time.