One Hundred Islands: DONE

By Aaron

The Inside Passage and the sounds & inlets of the west coast of Vancouver Island are absolutely littered with islands.  At some point we decided to keep track of all the islands we were landing on, and eventually it became a cruising goal to land on 100 during our trip around Vancouver Island.  Here are the criteria we used to qualify a landing:

1. It must be completely surrounded by water at the time of our landing (duh).  A few of the islands we landed on would actually not be islands during extreme low tides.  However, we only started keeping track after we’d already landed on about 25 islands so we definitely landed on at least 100 “true” islands.

2.  The island cannot be covered at high tide.  Furthermore, the island must have leafing vegetation or grass.  The abundant and barren rocks sticking out the water (mere hazards to navigation and not good islands) don’t count.

3.  To qualify as a landing we both must have gotten completely out of the dinghy and be standing on the island with both feet.  I say this because some islands we tried to land on were too dangerous to attempt a landing (sheer cliffs, crashing waves, etc) or too small.  But most of the islands were large enough to hike around and explore.  Many of the islands were fairly small, say 1000 square feet on average.  The vast majority were deserted.  A surprising number were unnamed.

(While not a requirement, Nicole would prefer that the islands be snake-free.  Three islands failed the snake test.  One landing resulted in a piggy-back ride back to the dinghy.)

Once we landed on the island, it’s pretty much considered conquered.  Here are a few samples of Bella Star’s champion island conquerer:

Even though the goal has been completed we’ll continue to conquer islands.  Hopefully the vegetation requirement will be fulfilled with cacti or palm trees.