VI Mid-Island Club Night – Small Boat to Alaska

After eighteen years, 50,000nm, and 1 ½ times around the world,  BCA members Cresswell Walker and Irena Chmielowicz sold their dream offshore boat. Now what? Is there any other sailing yet to be done? Hell yes!  The Pacific Northwest and Alaska, and in what better boat than a CS 30?

This is the story of ChitChat, their CS 30, through some of the most stunning and most challenging cruising in the world – the Pacific Northwest to Alaska and return. It is also a story of their psychological journey – downsizing from a 48′, offshore equipped, Oyster Lightwave, to their now beloved but minimally equipped, Canadian Sail Craft 30. Both stories are about a journey back to the heart of the matter. There is so much to be said for smallness; to paraphrase the late master storyteller Stewart McLean, ‘We’re not big AND we’re small!’

Cress and Irena are both lifelong water babies.  Cress began sailing the Pacific Northwest in his 20s, building and racing the Dash 34, Rapier. Irene sailed in the prairie lakes and in Toronto in her C&C 30. After joining BCA in 2003 as ‘Dreamers’, Cress and Irena sailed to Australia in their Westwind 35. Over the next 10 years this shared dream grew into a second boat, Conversations, an Oyster Lightwave 48. Now they are home in Nanaimo, sailing their CS 30 on the BC coast again and loving it.

BCA members and non-members are all welcome to this VI Mid-Island club night; please note it will not be available via Zoom. Doors open at 7:00pm and the presentation will begin at 7:45pm. Bar will be open – come early to enjoy conversation and camaraderie.

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