The first official cruise of the 2007 season was an ambitious long weekend in Howe Sound. The idea being to start easy, introducing some west coast newcomers and novice new members to the nearby cruising grounds and accomodate boats with families and young children; Gibson's lends itself superbly to such a plan.

Four boats had signed up "for sure" with a few more keeping their schedule open and planning to meet up on day #2. It all seemed like a sensible plan, until the weather turned sour. Saturday morning, 7:00AM, I was working on my hearty pre-sail breakfast when the phone started ringing: "It's raining; and it is blowing; and the forecast is calling for torrential downpours tomorrow".. Amazing how quickly all the best laid plans can be blown out the window.

A few more phone calls later, it seemed that only Ernie was sticking to the plan. Mind you, that custom J-36 interior of his, on SENZA, may have had something to do with his uncompromising attitude :-) Either way, Ernie followed the original itinerary. You can read his own report from Gibson's in the following WINKS story. The rest of us decided to play it by ear and wait it out - on call. Which of course was doubly annoying, since three hours later the skies cleared and we were treated to an amazing sunny day - still a bit too windy mind you, so those of us with youngsters stuck to our guns an stayed home.

Redemption on Sunday morning, when the skies really opened up to the forecasted torrent and made us all happy with our rationalizations.. Internet to the rescue: we kept in touch over the weekend and decided to salvage what was left of the weekend by rafting up in Seymour's Landing (Bowen) for day #3, Monday.

That part of the plan worked nicely. Four boats ended up meeting up at Passage and rafted-up in Seymour's Landing, along a visiting power boat: Lois & Heather on WANDERLUST (C&C25) and the club's three Sun 27s, MUMBLES II, MEGSTAR and SARANDIS.

We all got there a bit late, since we opted to sail the light winds, rather than motoring. We had a great time sampling the girls' excellent deli tray and comparing the three Suns.

The raft was cut a bit short, since all four of us were on SARANDIS 7kg CQR and the weird circular current in the anchorage kept resetting the anchor in increasingly funny angles. We go to kow the people on that powerboat quite well mind you..

In the end, we had to break the raft to move to deeper water, at which pointed we decided to just head back. The weather had finally cleared up, the sea breeze in the Bay was just right and we had a rather enjoyable mini-race back home.

A lot more photos, here

Lessons from the weekend:

a) We have to keep our plans even more flexible. When the forecast turned sour on Wednesday, my first impulse was to change the itinerary to Silva Bay or Newcastle Isl. It always rains much less on the other side, behind the Island's rain shaddow. Turns out it would have been a good plan: Sean from SLYC who went to Newcastle reported a great sunny wekend with just a bit of light drizzle on Sunday. In retrospect, it would have been nice to be able to quickly change the plan.

b) The cruising email list works well: there must have been at least a dozen messages through on Sunday, but we managed to save a bit of the weekend by quickly re-scheduling most of it on the spot. Great coordinating tool there..

Now, go read Ernie's report from Gibson's