BCA Pioneer Interviews: Blake Williams

In March of 2025, I had the pleasure of meeting with Blake Williams and Barb Angel at Spruce Harbour Marina. We had a wide-ranging discussion on their adventures and the early days of the Bluewater Cruising Association. What follows is the first of two (or possibly three) articles based on this meeting. These are more heavily edited than the previous articles in this series, to separate the individual narratives and provide clarity.

Again, I am indebted to Donna Sassaman for transcribing the recording and to Barb Peck and her team for the final editing.

I hope that you find as much enjoyment in reading these stories as I had in conducting the interviews.

Interview with Blake Williams

Barrie: Well, Blake, welcome to Bluewater Cruising Pioneers!

Blake: Arrrgh!

Barrie: Yes, arrrgh (chuckles)! We’ve talked on the phone many times and I’ve just had the pleasure of meeting you. I’m very much looking forward to looking over the historical material that you’ve brought after we’ve had our chat. But I think the first thing I’d like to ask is, how did you get interested in bluewater cruising?

Blake: I had moved here. I grew up on the East Coast so I knew the Atlantic Ocean, but I had to learn a lot here. My first boat here was the Lightning at Burrard Civic Marina. I’d drop it down, go for a sail, and pull it back up. Then I decided I’d like to get a larger boat. I sold the Lightning and bought an Alberg 30, very nice boat. That year I got moorage at Heather Civic Marina. (Great pub there, by the way!)

I got to sailing around and taking family to Victoria and into the San Juans… I said, you know, I’d really like to go offshore because as I was reading Robin Lee Graham and all of these books. And this was just about the time that Sam Sidneysmith and the originators held the first meeting [of the Bluewater Cruising Association]. Who was the guy with the family that was going out and they turned around and came back because of the rough wind; he ran the garage?

Barb Angel: Fred Tremblay.

Blake: Oh, yeah. So there was a band of people there and I went to them and they were just talking about forming it.

Barrie: This was approximately what year?

Blake: 1973. No, maybe later than that, but it was in the 70s for sure. I had the boat but I didn’t have the experience. Malcolm Wilkinson, at that time was a local boater (he built a boat in his yard in Point Grey)… he and his wife Darcy were giving classes at Kitsilano High School in the evening about preparing to go offshore. So I said, “Okay, well that’s nice.”

One of the classes was about celestial navigation. I said, “I’ve got to get a sextant, I’ve got to get some training.” So I took that course.

I began to get prepared. I talked to Sam Sidneysmith about it. Murray Napier … gave me some advice and I think Dave Fukahara gave me some advice. At that time…they weren’t members. I wasn’t a member.

Just before leaving, my wife and my daughters and I went up Howe Sound. Suddenly there was this bump. What the h___ is that?!? It was a log that had gone down and come back up.

Barrie: Oh, a deadhead kind of situation.

Blake: Yeah, and this is just a week before. (Forshadowing)

I found a crew member. I took my crew out a couple times to make sure that we were compatible and all that, because it’s a long journey.

It turned out that the boat was like pumping water all the time. Like where’s all this water coming from? Is the boat leaking? It turned out that the encounter with the deadhead had broken a seam in the fresh water tank. So now I said, “Okay, so how am I gonna replace all this water?”

I then had all these jerry cans on the boat.

So we boarded up and said goodbye and headed off.

Barrie: Where were you headed at this point?

Blake: To Victoria. It was a wild ride! We finally tied up in front of the Empress. Some friends in Victoria took me out to dinner. They were very generous with the wine!

The next day, we headed off.

I had one of those knotmeters that had a little impeller on it.

Barrie: Oh, yeah, logs.

Blake: Yeah, and it gave distance and speed and all that. I thought, this is great. This is going to be great. We get to Neah Bay. I patched the water tank, loaded up, and off we headed.

Barrie: Now where are you headed to?

Blake: We’re headed southeast of San Francisco, then out to Hawaii.

I had two months off work. We got becalmed for three days. I thought, “Oh no, oh no,” every day!

Eventually, we got to Hawaii at night. The wisdom would be to hold and come in during daylight. There were squalls forecast. We were both exhausted. We entered Hilo and cleared Customs at night (featured image is Antares in Radio Bay, Hilo).

I thought, “Oh, isn’t this great!” We went on a little trip around the volcanoes.

Then we were off to Lahaina, via the ‘Alenuihāhā Channel. It is as vicious as Cape Horn, according to the whalers at that time. My crew member said, “I’m going home.”

So now I’m thinking, “Oh, God, what am I going to do? What am I going to do?” The clock is ticking. My father’s saying, “Get that effing boat on a ship and get back here!”

I met Neil Barraclough. He had a t -shirt, a pair of jeans, a sweatshirt, and that was it.

Barrie: This is?

Blake: The new crew member, from Lahaina.

So I said to Neil, “Let’s do a trial run to Honolulu.” And we do that.

“I’ve got to fix the radar reflector.” So we do that.

Then we sailed overnight to Kauai. As we came in, the Atomic Four would not start. I said, “That jib has got to come down fast!” We’re now surfing in. There’s a cement dock with one black tire. I said, “Just hang on”. We made it, but added a black racing stripe on the hull.

Finally, it was time to head home. I said, “We’ve got to reprovision and go.” So we set off, going east and then north.

Sometimes we could hear [Blake makes the sound of deep breathing.] This was a basking shark.

Barrie: Oh, wow!

Blake: We got to see a lot of sea life.

I wanted to go North to find the westerlies. I said, “I’ve got to get this boat moving faster. What can I do?” So I took the risk of putting the boom out, the genoa out full, and the main out full, and surfing wherever I could. I was picking up speed.

Barrie: Were you wing on wing?

Blake: Yeah, yeah, plus surfing. I mean, then you reduce the wetted surface, and that cut about four days.

I remember it was overcast. We could not get a fix with the sextant – we didn’t know exactly where we were. I knew we were near the coast, but I didn’t know whether we were off Washington or BC. I was aiming for Juan de Fuca. I called the Coast Guard. I said, “Could you get a signal on this and just tell me?” He says, “Yeah, we’d love to, but the rangefinder is broken.”

Finally, I hailed a fisherman, and they were going into Tofino. I followed them and tied up, went in for a beer and a cooked dinner, filled up the jerry cans, and off we went, thinking, “It’s going to be a good wind tomorrow. We probably won’t need the gas. We’ll start doing that.”

Barrie: Now you’re heading south to go back to Juan de Fuca?

Blake: Yeah, past the big lighthouses and all that.

I weighed about 180 pounds when I left. I was 135 when I came back.

Barrie: Whoa, that’s a diet! So you were gone for how long total on that one?

Blake: It was almost two months to the day. Then right back to work.

Barrie: And that was on the Alberg, right?

Blake: I was on the Alberg 30.

Barrie: So what were your instruments on board in those days?

Blake: One sextant, the compass. I had to throw wood chips overboard to guesstimate the speed.

We were a dry boat. going down. We arrived in Victoria and made up for it in the Library Bar!

Then I spent more fuel going from Victoria to Vancouver than I did…

Barrie: The whole trip? Because you were fighting wind and current the whole way?

Blake: Yeah.

So that was it. When I came back, I just said, “I’m a captain now! I’m a captain! I’ve done that.”

Then somebody said, “Well, why don’t you join Bluewater? And I said, “Why not?!”

Liv Kennedy, who was an author of so many good things maritime, convinced me to do a presentation at the Maritime Museum.

Then I did a course in Fraser Valley College for people who were interested in offshore sailing.

These were the days with slide projectors and carousels and all that ancient technology that nobody knows about anymore and can’t convert.

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More stories from my interview with Blake Williams and Barb Angel coming soon!