Juan De Fuca
We stayed in Bamfield on Tuesday because they were forecasting gale force winds of 40 knots for Juan De Fuca and rain. Today was basically the same forecast except they said the gale was going to come up later in the day so we would have more time to make it to shelter. We got up at 0415 and were underway at 0445 just after dawn. There was not wind for the first 6 hours so we motored at 5.5 knots, then about 1100 it started to pick up and we started sailing about 1230. It was blowing about 25 knots around 1500 but as it was with us it wasn't too bad, a real ride, surfing down the waves, doing over 7 knots steady. I was watching the GPS and it was recording over 8.5 knots when we were surfing and a couple of times I saw over 9 knots. By this time we only had the main up and we were just boogieing. We dropped anchor at 1730 in a nice sheltered spot about 10 miles southwest of Victoria, we will be able to make it home easily tomorrow.