Cruising Vancouver Island:
An Ideal Shakedown For Extended Voyaging
By Wendy Hinman
As my husband, Garth, and I planned to venture offshore, our heads spun with everything we needed to do to get our boat ready. Magazines intimidated us with all the luxuries and potential safety equipment we might carry. Ads taunted us with “How much is your life worth?” Our budget answered that otherwise unanswerable question. We bought a 31-foot boat, simply outfitted because that was all we could afford at the time, and we were unwilling to postpone our dreams to some indefinite future which might never come.
We found that the best way to prepare was to use our boat to figure out what worked for us. The first two years after we purchased our boat, we tested both ourselves and the boat by sailing to nearby anchorages. But as the date of our offshore departure loomed, we sought a more rugged test of our skills and equipment than the familiar bays and islands around Seattle: we decided to circumnavigate Vancouver Island for a shakedown cruise. It was a good decision. More . . .
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