As Summer Sky came alive, so did her crew. Heeling away from the wind and the curling swell, she carved skyward along the lifting face, furrowed briefly through her pedestal's crest, then gathered even greater speed as she raced the exhilarating escalator into the following trough! I propped my left foot on the port rail. My chest swelled. Cheeks reddened. A smile started, spreading to a grin as Teresa's usual screams of 'too much sail' signaled I must be having fun.       Our three sailboats bucked and rolled at the dock, their masts intersecting metronomes scolding the cloudless sky, as yet another fishing rocket disappeared beyond its mountainous wake. It was 1:00 in the afternoon on the 7th of July, our second day in Tofino, on the west coast of Vancouver Island, and all three couples were fed-up with the endless assault of full-throttled engines screaming past our starboard rails.       We were line-astern, on the channel side of the outer float, in narrow Dufferin Passage. The busy fishing charter marina had been the only space left when we'd arrived the previous afternoon from our quiet anchorage in Clayoquot Sound. Unknown to us at the time, the armada of 'Grady White Hunters' were away, raping a depleted resource. By the time we all staggered back from our shoreside shuffle between the ATM, LCB, PO, and PUB, they were all back and celebrating. Ice tinkled in frosted glasses. Excited voices clashed. Thumping boom-boxes battled. Filleting knives and cameras flashed. We retreated below. Overwhelmed, we decided to escape the bustling marina, where electronically overloaded Grady Whites rolled, and beaming, big-bellied tourists gutted trophy salmon. It seemed a symbolic gutting of an endangered industry, as adjacent fish canneries drooped in decay, with a redundant commercial fleet rafted dejectedly nearby. Across the wake-torn channel, frozen in tragic irony, a pleading statue of a once nurturing Mother Earth watched in stoic silence, one ignored arm pointing down to the sea and salmon, the other to the impervious sky. We motored along the congested shoreline and around the point towards the west-facing cliffs of Tofino. Our many reference books mentioned mooring buoys in Duffin Cove. At least we could psychologically get away, even if our cockpits were backlit by the porchlights of "tourist town."       Reality Bites Things can sure differ in reality from one's interpretation of a chart or guide book. I expected dainty, wheelbarrow-size tire buoys floating on a flat, sun-glazed sea. What I found were four heavy-duty, industrial tanks, better suited for rust-streaked freighters! A stack of three tractor-trailer tires bolted between square steel plates, with a four inch loop of rusted iron welded to a curved yoke a foot above our decks, heaved and rolled towards me as I maneuvered alongside. My flat sea undulated with two foot rollers sweeping around Wickaninnish Island, which I had thought would protect us from the open sea beyond. The six knot breeze seemed to be building. There wasn't another boat in sight. Suddenly, I wasn't so sure that was a good thing. Once we were secured, I wasn't so sure about that, either.       While the flooding breeze kept our vessels facing seaward, the ebbing tide kept running us into the buoys. Then we'd just stall there, rubbing our bows like a friendly cat against the rubber shins of these black behemoths! We soon looked like we'd been trampled by a runaway semi! I split my time between fending off, debating whether to rig the spinnaker pole as a bowsprit, and consulting our references for a better alternative. Any alternative!       There were none. It was go back to the same dock, which was now probably full; ride this out, with a growing wind and swell crashing onto the lee shore two hundred yards behind us; or head off for Ucluelet on an ebbing tide, into increasing wind and decreasing daylight.       Sitka is a Peterson 33, and John and Jean knew their stuff. So did Willy and Elly on Gypsy Spirit, their heavily cruised Contessa 32. Along with Tess and I on our Crown 34, Summer Sky, we had all exhausted our home waters, from Puget to Blackfish Sound. Because of the daily distances we needed to cover in our allotted six week circumnavigation of Vancouver Island, we required early starts to ensure landfall in daylight. Early starts meant thick fog and little or no wind. Repeatedly we would motor into our destination in early afternoon, just as the fog was lifting before the rising breeze. All of us had contemplated leaving later in the day, but were uncomfortable with the possibility of attempting an unfamiliar landfall on these rock-infested shores in the dark. Not to mention the rodeo ride waiting if we left on an ebbing tide. Now it was stay here, or deal with both! How could we hesitate with a downwind sail under brilliant sun waiting? The wispy mares' tails creeping up from the westem horizon clinched it. We opted to go.       Minefield As we exchanged the 12 foot shallows of Templar Channel, behind the questionable shelter of Wickaninnish Island, for the exposed 50 foot depths that stretched a mile to Lennard Island and the open ocean, a totally unexpected world welcomed us. Boisterously! Twelve foot breaking rollers, forced up from 200 foot depths only four miles seaward, marched unhindered over Surprise Reef to starboard and reared threateningly over our beam. An instant fifteen knot wind exploded their crests. We were surprised! I was at the mast attaching the mainsail halyard. One moment I was standing on a horizontal deck, eyes skyward, hands fiddling with the halyard clevis, the next I was straddling the horizontal mast like an amateur bronc rider, arms and legs squeezing that precious pole as my bulging eyes focused on the turbulence trailing away from our submerged port toerail. An ocean of ebbing water coursed out of Clayoquot Sound and Tofino Inlet to meet the wind driven not-so-Pacific immensity shouldering in and tripped by the shoaling seabed. Tess' screaming epithets from the wheel added to the chaos.       As I struggled against gravity to peel myself from the mast, I noticed a red and white float ahead. Then another. The more I looked, the more I saw, stretching away through the thrashing, washing machine surface in every direction. We were surrounded by endless parallel runways of undulating crab floats.       Somehow, I would have to stay in our lane, crab the boat to weather to counter leeway, and kill the engine before our prop snagged a line. I wrestled the main up, unfurled most of the 130, ignored the improperly adjusted car, which was submerged anyway, killed the engine, and cranked the backstay. Adrenaline ruled. Like an overloaded floatplane, we crashed into the troughs, roared up the curling faces to explode through the crests in aborted liftoff, gauged our placement between the lanes, and hurtled back into the abyss. The red and white floats streaked past in a blur of bleeding froth, augmenting our sense of speed and exhilaration. Never mind sail trim. Steer and hang on!       Altered States Six miles, and an exhausting hour later, we cleared Gowlland Rocks and altered course to 105M. The sixteen mile run to Amphitrite Point undulated in white streaks before us. While the wind had freshened to 20 knots, the seas in this deeper water had subsided to a boring six foot swell. Unfortunately, the wave trains steamed shoreward at a 45¡ angle, and paralleling the shore only made the boat pitch, wallow, and heave. Like a practiced dance partner, my stomach followed! The obvious solution was to reach off towards Japan, racing through the troughs with the wind on the beam. This only worked if there was enough wind to drive you though, which our early morning starts usually missed. Otherwise, underpowered in the constant swell, you'd just be extremely busy, going nowhere, but rolling and heaving a lot!       But this time, we had wind! Gusting to 25 now, it was pushing the odd wave above eight feet. Sitka was long gone. After a couple of exploratory stabs at wing on wing, we jibed over and gave chase. Gypsy Spirit wallowed the rhumb line.       As Summer Sky came alive, so did her crew. Heeling away from the wind and the curling swell, she carved skyward along the lifting face, furrowed briefly through her pedestal's crest, then gathered even greater speed as she raced the exhilarating escalator into the following trough! I propped my left foot on the port rail. My chest swelled. Cheeks reddened. A smile started, spreading to a grin as Teresa's usual screams of 'too much sail' signaled I must be having fun. Sitka's masthead appeared over a distant crest, on a converging course. I lost her in the trough. There she is again! Soon the navy hull was visible as we rocketed towards each other. In a moment of clarity I realized the screaming voice I had been ignoring was my own, not Teresa's, as I heard myself yelling..."Seven and a half! Eight! We hit eight knots! Did you see that?"       Sitka and Summer Sky crossed three boat lengths apart, the lather of our boiling wakes blending with the collapsing crests. The wind caught our excitement and puffed to 35. Infused with the mood, the occasional wave stretched to ten feet. Jibing became a serious mood dampener, but once completed, the concern was quickly displaced. The two boats leapt and spun, crossing, pirouetting and recrossing again, sometimes only an arm's length apart, as our spirits boomed through the troughs and soared up the crests! Johnny and I were beaming at each other as we passed, with smiles so wide and bright you'd have thought we'd invented Viagra! Jean and Teresa just stared across with cold faces at their two idiots. Somewhere back in the gathering haze, barely discernible amongst the white streaked lines of crumbling swells, the faint image of Gypsy Spirit's sails pitched and heaved in the building wind.       At 1750 we zeroed in on Y43, the green buoy to the southeast of Amphitrite Point looking waaay too close to shore for us to approach. However the soaring spume from the waves exploding upon Jenny Reef three hundred yards south of the buoy soon had us hugging her like a mark in a race. We rounded into the outer reaches of Ucluelet harbor, and doused sails at the head of an empty Stuart Bay.       The wind persisted through the anchorage at a muted 20 knots. A scattering of cormorants bobbed on the sparkling, corrugated surface, looking, through my watering eyes, like the smaller mooring buoys I'd expected in Duffin Cove. Teresa climbed into the cockpit juggling a crackers and cheese platter, an open bottle of wine, and one glass. Pausing with the bottle beneath her lips, she answered my obvious question...       "Every time you tried to avoid something, you made things worse! First you had to escape the tourists. Then the mooring buoys. Then a minefield of crab floats and tidal waves. And you still weren't happy. You had to zig-zag all over that pukey ocean to get here only to dodge a reef! But I made it... and I didn't get sick. I plan to celebrate! I hope you're happy now; at least there's no tourists."       I wondered what she thought the local commercial fisherman called us, but being an experienced husband, I said nothing and reached for the wine instead. Life was good. Until we discovered the joys of Juan De Puke Ahh Strait!