The Coast Guard Escorted Me Home This Weekend

Keelin and I spent this weekend on Vancouver Island in British Columbia. We sailed on the Washington State ferry from Anacortes to Sidney, B.C. and drove up the island coast to Point No Point, near where the Pacific meets the Strait of Juan de Fuca. In Seattle, I live a couple of blocks from Puget Sound, which feels like a bay, but at Point No Point you get actual waves, rocky shores, and waves more like the ocean. It is an amazing, pristine spot. The next two days we spent in Victoria. . .a town which impresses me more every time I am there. . .mainly because I associate it with seeing my daughter Claire, but also because it is a really nice city and I like Canadians. We ate outside at a restaurant, walked all over town, and stopped to watch a Zydeco show at the folk festival.

On the way home, moments after The Elwha pulled out, the Captain announced we would have an escort on the ride home. No, not Orcas or Grey whales, but the United States Coast Guard. The escort was due to "the heightened security conditions" following the London Tube and bus bombings.

The ferry was escorted all the way from Vancouver Island, B.C., Canada to Anacortes, WA, USA by two boats, one on our port side, and one starboard. One boat said U.S. Coast Guard; the other, U.S. Border Patrol.

They were nimble, fast boats and stayed very close. Whenever we passed another boat, whether a cabin cruiser or sailboat or yacht or barge, the Coast Guard moved between us and the boat. The Coast Guard boats spent a lot of time doing circles/doughtnuts and looked like they were having a grand old time. In retrospect, those doughnuts were a sort of Maginot Line.

Everyone was a little baffled as to what they could do to save us if a plane ran into us, or if someone on board had a bomb. It seemed a little silly. We seemed to have been briefly profiled as our cars pulled in, but compared to air travel, the security was meager.

We later realized they must have been armed with rockets or some kind of heavy artillery in case a boat tried to ram or bomb us. Needless to say, we made it back in one piece. I wonder if they are escorting the Superferries to Bainbridge Island that carry four times more people, and twice as many cars?
---o0o---