Shipwrecked on Vancouver Island

The Vancouver Sun reported yesterday that Tucson’s Keith Carver, 56, had wrecked his 40-ft ferrocement sailboat on Vancouver Island, and survived for five days by eating lichen before being rescued by a passing helicopter. The story goes that Carver and a buddy bought the boat in Anacortes last month with the intention of sailing to Mexico. They made it about 70 miles down the west coast of Washington before a winter storm blew them north. At some point, Carver’s buddy (who was not named in the article) apparently broke his arm, so the pair stopped in Tahsis in Nootka Sound — halfway up Vancouver Island, and well inland — so his friend could seek medical attention. Then Carver set out on his own, and made it as far as the Strait of Juan de Fuca before getting pounded by another storm. "This time he decided to seek shelter in Port Alice," the report notes. "But before he made it his boat started to fall apart. By Friday night his rudder was wrecked and he could no longer steer the vessel and he decided to abandon his boat." Carver wisely donned his wetsuit before leaving the boat, which undoubtedly saved his life as winter on Vancouver Island is anything but temperate.

This story raises a number of questions. First, it’s odd that any but the most experienced sailor would even think about sailing down the Washington and Oregon coasts in the winter. Not only is the prevailing wind from the south, but the chance of getting spanked — or worse — by a winter storm is almost guaranteed, so why would someone put themselves, their crew and their boat in such a high-risk situation unnecessarily? Secondly, when the sailors saw they were getting set too far north, why didn’t they just tuck into Barkley Sound, on the southwest end of Vancouver Island, and wait for a better window? Instead, they rode the weather to Nootka Sound, then traveled all the way up a long inlet to Tahsis. Then Carver repeated the adventure after heading out on his own, only this time ending up in Vancouver Island’s northern-most sound: Quatsino. But he didn’t hide out in one of the many anchorages in Quatsino; instead he continued all the way to Port Alice in weather rough enough to destroy his boat. Why? And the final bit of the puzzle is why Carver ate only lichen, a type of algae. We’re no survivalists, but it seems as if just about anything else on Vancouver Island — mollusks, for example — would be more edible than lichen.

Carver may very well have perfectly plausible answers to all of these questions, but since we don’t know them, we’ll take this opportunity to remind everyone — whether you’re sailing in the wilds of B.C. or in Southern California — always keep one eye on the weather when heading offshore, and have a ‘Plan B’ ready, just in case.