Treasure Hunting with our Kids

We acquired our Spencer 24 sailboat a few years ago and are blessed to live in one of the best places in the world to sail, The Straight of Georgia. This body of water separates Vancouver Island from the Lower Mainland of British Columbia. Some of the most beautiful mountain scenery you'll ever see is at our doorstep, not to mention seeing Orcas, Pacific White Sided Dolphins, many types of Whales, the list goes on...

Last summer another Dad and myself took our two seven year old boys on a three day excursion from our port, French Creek just north of Nanaimo, through out the Gulf Islands ( You see so little of it in three days!) The highlight of the weekend was the "Treasure Hunt". I picked up an old 'Antiquey looking ' bottle the week before our trip. In the bottle I placed a letter that was supposedly written by "Blackbeard the Pirate" ( Yeah, I know he was an East Coast guy, but hey, the seven year olds don't know that!) After running the rapids at Dodd Narrows in our Spencer 24, I tossed this bottle over the side when the boys weren't looking, then immediately called their attention to this bottle floating in the ocean.

Well, the boys finding a bottle in the ocean with a note in it from none other than Blackbeard was just too much. There were instructions on finding his treasure in the "Bay of Montague on the Isle of Galiano"! We (the Dads) had so much fun watching these two in their excitement. Arriving at our destination at 11:00 p.m. we had to include in Blackbeards instructions that "the X marks the spot will be seen only in the mornin' light at the lowest tide!" This allowed us to go to bed that night! The following morning we went treasure hunting, following the clues to find "X Marks The Spot" Seeing these two kids feverishly digging in the sand, and finding a treasure chest was a memory that will last a lifetime. I put gold foil wrapped chocolate "dubloons" and silver foil wrapped Hershey kisses in the box along with a couple of cap guns and caps to boot. Priceless stuff!!

We had to of course, take our daughters on a similar expedition to see if they could be so fortunate as to find such luck. So later in the summer, three Dads and four little girls (4-7yrs) went to Jedediah Island Marine Park to camp out. And wouldn't you know it, they, the girls, found a bottle in the driftwood at Driftwood Beach. And there too, were instructions on finding Blackbeards treasure. The contents, of course, were more feminine, lots of costume jewelry, the obligatory chocolate "dubloons" and amazingly, there were four of everything in the box. They are convinced that they were eating 200 year old chocolate! :)

The sailing season here is year round of course. (Where else can you Ski in the morning at Mt Washington, then sail and catch salmon in the afternoon?) We reduce our sailing in the winter as my work interferes with it! (and we do get some pretty strong gales from the north...) This summer though, we'll be back out there, finding more Treasure! The other dads and I are thinking maybe we'll do a week long trip through out the islands based on an 'Indiana Jones' theme. We'll see how it works out and let you know! I'm writing this to you in hopes that it may give some other parents some ideas on how to add a little different type of fun to sailing. Any other ideas that others may have, I'd love to hear. For us, sailing without kids is just plain boring!