Salt Spring Island sailing news.. a huge schooner sail by island. This was no ordinary sail boat, this was a full sized schooner under full sail. I have lived on the coast for 6 years and have only seen this ship under sail once before. I believe it is the Pacific Grace. It is just cool to see. It was in about 1850 that the big schooners sailed here for the first time. We have a tree on our land that must be five hundred years old and it would be interesting if it could talk. I imagine it saw the first explores sailing up the channel. Little did the tree know that other ships would come with Europeans carrying saws. The reason great grandfather (our name for the big Douglas fir) was spared was because it has a crook in it.