I’m not certain when I started to dislike Canadian winters. To be fair, it isn’t winter itself I hate, its the cold. I mean, I love Christmas and the holiday season, I love snow, and I love winter sports like hockey (which I just started playing again). I remember the first time I saw snow, I was about seven years old and we were temporarily living in British Columbia with my uncle and fisherman extraordinaire, Stephen. It was one of those heavy snowfalls that rarely occur on the west coast and we played for hours in the snow, making snowmen and snow angels. It was incredible. Until that day, I had no idea what snow was. My sister and I grew up only knowing of white sand beaches and turquoise colour oceans. From that day forward, I looked forward to every winter and the first snow fall, that is until I grew up.
On really cold days I ask myself, why would anybody want to live in a place like this? Why not live somewhere that has warm weather all year long? In 2005, in the middle of the winter I decided that I had had enough of winter, and packed my bags and headed south to La Paz, Mexico to meet up with Jon and fish the Sea of Cortez.
I’m glad I did, it changed my life. After a month in the desert I met my wife to be, Gillian, but after almost six months we both agreed that La Paz was not the place for us. We headed back to Canada, specifically Mississauga, Ontario - the town I grew up. I had friends and family there, and got my old job at the bank back right away. By the time the chill of fall was in the air we both decided that staying for a freezing winter was not an option.
September 2005 marked one of the happiest time in my life, my return to the British Virgin Islands. Since my sister, mother and I left the BVI when I was five, I had only visited a handful of times. We arrived with nothing more then the shirts on our back, a tent, a camera, a laptop and of course, my fishing rods. We spent our first several weeks camping near the beach at Brewers Bay during hurricane season while we looked for an apartment to rent. After a few months settling in, things were going great. We lived in a small apartment on a mountain top with a brilliant panoramic view of several islands. Best of all, the ocean was a five minute drive from our apartment, and the sea was full of tarpon!
British Virgin Islands tarpon
Our time in the Virgins Islands had a lot of ups and downs. In the end, financial difficulties and health problems ultimately caused us to leave. We returned to Canada, and spent a year in Ontario, and have since relocated to beautiful Nova Scotia. I currently have two jobs, (three if you count Fishing Fury, but this is a labour of love, and as you can see by the lack of advertising, this doesn’t exactly bring in any income). Things are going great since we moved to the east coast, but it’s winter, and it’s cold and I don’t like the cold.
There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about life in the BVI. Since I can’t experience it in person, the next best thing is to read about others enjoying the sunshine and fishing. There is one blog that I check regularly to get my BVI fix, The Captains Log Blog. If you plan to visit the BVI or the Carbibean, these site will give you a taste of what you will get to see. And if you are looking for a sailing charter (with fishing), look no further!
images via Sail Dive BVI
Ken Barnes set off on October 28th from Long Beach, California, in hopes becoming the first American to sail all the way around the world, solo. A storm off the tip of South America with winds up to 40-50 mile per hour snapped his masts and rolled his boat. Ken, inside the boat at the time, was sent flying and rolling around the interior cabin, he received only a long gash on his thigh and is otherwise unharmed by the whole ordeal.
“The boat rolled 360 degrees. I was inside the boat, if I would have been outside, I wouldn’t be here today,” he said. “But like I say, I went around with the boat as everything else did inside the boat. The batteries ended up in the sink, all the tools, the floorboards, one of them came up and broke in half.”
U.S. Coast Guard and Chilean maritime officials received a distress beacon from Ken on Tuesday, minutes after he made a call to his girlfriend on his satellite phone. However, it wasn’t until Friday that a Chilean fishing vessel, guided by a navy plane, was able to reach Ken some 500 miles (800km) from shore. Barnes survived huddled to his sinking boat, in his survival suit, eating pop tarts and granola bars. Given all Kens problems, sunken boat and all, he should be happy that Chile, unlike most countries, pays all expenses for maritime rescue operations.
via CNN
It was by pure luck that I stumbled upon a book called Kon-Tiki while at a small local flea market. I was looking for old fishing magazines when an old faded hard cover book caught my eye for some reason. At first sight the book looked like nothing more then a beat up novel, clearly older then myself, without so much as a title on its cover. Everyone who had glanced through the bin marked fifty cents, had judged this book by its cover and left it behind. On closer inspection I noticed the book had what appeared to be some sort of tribal warrior mask engraved into its cover. I flipped through the book slowly and immediately my interest was peaked. The title read: Kon-Tiki Across the Pacific By Raft, by Thor Heyerdahl. Further into the book there were old photographs of life on the raft including several pictures of impressive fish. I reached in my pocket for change, counted fifty cents, and purchased the book.
After reading through much of the book I looked online for more information and to my surprise, a small crew of men were planning to complete Heyerdahl’s epic expedition in the near future. In 1947 Heyerdahl set out on his Kon-Tiki expedition in a copy of a prehistoric South American raft to prove that prehistoric man was capable of making the journey from South America to Polynesia. Just a few days ago, on April 28 2006, the Tangaroa expedition began with new improved raft designs coupled with some modern technological advances.
The voyage has been called “the greatest fishing trip†and the good folks over at Mustad have once again helped to sponsor the journey.
I highly recommend reading Heyerdahl’s book and following along with the current expedition here. I’ll be following this one from start to finish, wishing I was there!
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I spent last weekend on the water, but this time without a fishing rod. I took part in the Nanny Cay Nations Cup, a sailing event featuring teams from around the world. Haveing no sailing experience, I still decided to take part without hesitation when I was asked.
With one practise under our belts we set out to race early Saturday morning as the underdogs, but by the end of day one, our crew had worked hard and we were in second place overall. Sunday brought high winds and big waves, but we were determined to win.
“We were set to race in the final race with the first place team. We had a narrow hold on second place, but a bad finish in this race could send us into third overall. The race started fast, and we were immediately in bad position. Be battled to move up and after the first lap we were in third place with two boats right on our tail. It was uncertain if we would be able to hold off the other teams at this point and we all were getting worried.”
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