It was a glorious sunny perfectly calm morning on a slack tide when a paddle boarder approached Race Rocks from the west. What perfect conditions, what perfect timing! I thought now that’s a person living their best life. I wanted to yell out HELLO! from the roof of the Energy Building but didn’t want to ruin their experience. After an hour they slowly paddled off to the north.

The conditions and timing were terrible for the other 98 boats approaching from the north. It was the 80th annual Swiftsure race. At least the navy knew about the race this year and didn’t raise a submarine in the middle of the fleet.

At 11:00 the boats were spread across the horizon, with two boats in the center of pack clearly in the lead. The two lead boats headed straight to Race Rocks and reached a stand still around 11:15. The maximum flood current today was 4.7 knots at 12:17. With the light SE winds of 4 knots they were unable to the fight current and were loosing way, travelling backwards. During their struggles in the current by North Rock, the boats that headed toward Williams Head and took the shore route continued to cover ground. However only the two lead shore boats had the timing right. They managed to squeak past Bentinick Island just in time and sailed up Juan de Fuca Straight on the same tack until they disappeared on the horizon.

The two boats able to make it past Bentinck Island

The first two boat heading up Juan de Fuca Straight in 4 knot SE winds

The boats piled up at Bentinick island (foresails lowered, some maybe at anchor) and the smaller group around Race Rocks had to wait out the strong currents and light winds of 1 knot. Conditions improved enough around 14:00 for the boats to travel again. By 15:00 the winds were up to 15 knots from the west. It was fascinating to watch and I wonder what conditions are like for the boats now.

Boat waiting at Bentinck Island for conditions to improve

Facility work

• cleaned solar panels
• started clearing vegetation away from the electric fence line (We need these areas accessible to maintain the fences which are intended to restrict the sea lions to the rocky shore)

Vessels

• ecotourism: 19
• private: 10 (This number is higher than usual, probably due to Swiftsure, and several speeding infractions were observed)
• sailing vessels: 9
• paddle boarder: 1

Weather

Sunny. Winds calm in the morning, light and variable until early afternoon, building to westerly 24 by early evening.