SMALL BOAT CRUISE: Nootka Sound

I designed and built my 18-foot sail and-oar boat, Fire-Drake, with a major adventure in mind—rowing and sailing British Columbia’s Inside Passage in 2016 and 2017.

- Alex Zimmerman

Since then, my voyaging with the lug yawl has been different. While I have always believed that age is just a number, I can’t escape the fact that I’m no longer young, and even the most charitable would be hard-pressed to describe me as middle-aged. I am, in a word, old, and with age has come new afflictions, the most aggravating of which is atrial fibrillation (“afib” in medical shorthand). While I can still put in long days on the oars, my cardiologist says it’s not a good idea. In 2018 I reluctantly caved in and bought a small outboard for Fire-Drake.

Nootka Sound is one of five great inlets indenting the west coast of Vancouver Island and is the site of the only Spanish outpost ever established in Canada. I had traveled through the area twice on the local freighter, Uchuck lll, with my kayak aboard, en route to the Brooks Peninsula, but had never spent any time in the Sound in my own boats. Last summer, I remedied that by trailering Fire-Drake up-island from Victoria to the launch ramp at Gold River, intending on a thorough exploration of the Sound and its islands.

In the campground the evening before I launched I had a brief episode of afib, but it settled down after I took the meds I carry. I was wakened at dawn by the calling of bald eagles and Swainson’s thrushes—nature’s alarm clocks. I launched