Windward Passage

[Antaria]

Breezes blowing off of the waters of the Caribbean: marine accord, seaweed, and bladderwrack.

The first to review this one!!

My very first first review ... well, lets get started!

Imp: Wonderful salty sea breeze!

Wet: It's like the part of Jolly Rogers that I really love which reminds me of wind, sea water, perhaps a bit of wood. Really beautiful!

Dry: Still a bit of the salty sea breeze but a lot of soap, too. It reminds me of a blue bubble bath we used as kids. Somehow I love it because it brings back the memorys of hugging my dad after he had a bath - he always used a lot of this bubble bath and later on those evenings the hole house smelled like this.

I would have loved Windward Passage more if it would stay in the wet phase - but I still like it

In addition it is one of those few BPALs which does not turn sweet on me.

It doesn't have much throw - at least not compared to Pumpkin Patch III (2007) which I have on my other hand.

Definitly a keeper and I will try to use it in my hair, on my boyfriend and as a room scent Perhaps a bottle one day ...

edit:
Later: A lot of the soap is vanished and now it is again more like wet - it is not the perfection of the initial scent but still - I like it a lot

edit2:
Lots later: It is really nice and still fresh and salty. Everytime I get a whiff from it I smile. The soap is now completly gone. I'm sure I'll buy a big bottle once because this makes me happy. Edited October 18, 2007 by Antaria

[sookster]

straight sniff from bottle is truly salty and aquatic; fresh

seaweed just washed up onto the beach...

 

once applied this gets stronger and stronger omG...i smell

something slightly citrus; after 15 to 20 minutes this calms down tremendously

and i am sensing salt and a citronella candle...a touch of sweetness (bladderwrack maybe?)

 

for me this an utterly gorgeous blend and i am happy to have it...

 

i'll wear it often, close my eyes and visual myself on one of my favorite beaches

in Provincetown

 

ETA: 4/1/08...so after almost 6 months of aging i decided to dig this beauty out of the depths of

the wooden tomb where it lay and try it again....ZomG...

straight sniff from bottle is fish!! seriously ... has to be the seaweed note!!

amazingly, once it is applied there is no fish note at all...enormously lemony and salty....

i am so glad i aged this and tried it after awhile...i still love it to death!!

aaargh mayteeez!!

[Lycanthrope]

It's so... seaweed!

 

The vial almost made me go arrrrrr in a different sort of way, because I could really smell the wet-rotty-squishiness of the seaweed, but the drydown is marvelously aquatic and it makes me want to swash some buckles and yo ho a few bottles of rum.

 

It also brings to mind the New England coast, so that's very nice. I wish I lived by a real ocean, and not a gigantic lake, heh heh.

[slave1]

WINDWARD PASSAGE

 

In Bottle: Soapy ozone

 

On Skin: This scent is the definition of a “clean” scent. It has a crystal clear ozone note and strikes me as soapy. It is light blue/white in tone, like the ocean and it’s sea spray. If you like ozone and aquatic scents, this is a must have. Ozone scents always feel a bit more masculine to me and here it is the case for sure. I also get a light and slightly sweet lemon note, or some sort of citrus. It starts bold, and mellows out nicely. This is a great scent to wake you up. Being at my desk at work, this brought me out of the work-haze I was in. Very bright! Medium throw and long wearlength.

[Blood onmy hands]

Windward Passage is one of the soapiest bpal scents I've ever tried. I do get a salty tang that I enjoy upon first application, but then this turns to soap and dryer sheets. I might smell a hint of something citrusy after letting it settle for a while, but the overall result on me is that I smell like citrus scented dryer sheets and some sort of strong, generic soap. I have a hard time wearing clean scents, and I can't pull this one off.

Edited September 27, 2016 by Little Bird

[edenssixthday]

Windward Passage – When sniffed in the vial, this smells like The Worst Smelling BPAL. I don’t think it would be very polite to say what it actually smells like to me. However, once it touches my skin, it loses the horror-inducing odor and becomes kind of tame and boring for a marine scent. I was hoping for a nice, deep, seaweedy aquatic, but rather, I get something that smells like an ocean scented bathroom cleaner. The throw and staying power are both light. This one’s getting tossed in the swap pile.

[prettybird]

I have to say that I completely agree with edenssixthday: it is The Worst Smelling BPAL in the bottle. Quite honestly, it smells like

stale crotch

.

 

Fortunately, that goes away on my skin. Unfortunately, it's... just boring. It goes soapy very quickly. On the whole, I'll stick to Caliban.

[Kittenish]

This smells very much like what Sea of Glass smelled like (which I gave to a friend, whom aquatics work a lot better on than me). It's not that I don't like the smell... on the contrary, windward passage is fresh, salty and very pretty. Aquatics just aren't *me*... good thing I got this as a freebie. I think I'll hold onto it though.

 

Wet, it smells, well, wet. Like the ocean, so salty I can almost taste it, with a hint of soap. A few minutes on and there's something else in there... something a little spicy but it's so light I can't figure out what it is.

 

All in all, very pretty, refreshing scent!

[lady_pandora]

Windward Passage reminds me of nothing so much as a fresh, clean, slightly masculine soap, like Zest or Irish Spring. It's not at all bad or offensive, but it's not "me." I think this would smell amazing on a man.

[zankoku_zen]

Irish Spring indeed! This is a clean, ozoney, slightly soapy, slightly masculine kinda smell.

 

That is, if you like your guy to smell like Irish Spring does Pirates!

[aquazoo]

Starts a bit soapy. Yep, really wet, salty and sea-like! It’s got a lime overtone, might be nice for a guy.

[hkhm]

imp: i don't know what to make of this one. on the one hand, it smells like a soapy clean aquatic. on the other hand, there's this unusual stink that smells like unwashed bodies... i'm almost afraid to try this one.

 

wet: thank god that whatever the stinky bit was faded and vanished after touching my skin. this is now a squeaky-clean, almost lime, aquatic. very crisp, bright and clean.

 

dry: this dries to a very simple aquatic with a bare hint of it's lime-soap cleanliness. almost a spicy after-scent as well. my imp will be more than enough for me.

 

(edited for spelling idiocy)

Edited February 14, 2008 by hkhm

[maribouquet]

Ooh, a very clean, oceanic scent. Unfortunately for me, my skin takes this and turns it into soap, as it does with pretty much all aquatics, I'm afraid.

[SueDonym]

This starts out very ozone-y to me, in imp and on skin, almost Yog-Soggoth like without the men's cologne aspects of that fragrance.

 

For me this is more about the wind in the sails rather than the salt and the sea.

I get a very air-y sense of things, maybe a snap of sail, but mostly just straight breeze. At one point I almost thought I had a very smooth lemon, but maybe that was the bladderwrack or the seaweed. In any event it is very smooth, very fresh, very...airy. Wind indeed. I thought there might be a very little ambergris here but, you know, could be/probably wrong.

 

On the drier areas of my body it disappears quickly, but in the crook of my arm gets much more sea-like in the dry stages. Still with that high air note, though. If I think about it too much, that's all I get. I keep wondering what it is, that note.

 

Very clean scent. Airy. Did I mention the breeze?

[stardreamer]

Not a lot to say about this one. As should be expected from the description, it's a nice aquatic, not too strong; nothing about it really stands out from any of the other aquatics I already have. Staying power is average; after 8 hours, it was fairly faint, and after 12, it's pretty much gone. Bottom line: Not going to be a top favorite, but I like aquatic scents in general, so worth keeping.

[theal8r]

the aquatics tend to make my nose itch and give me a headache, so imagine my surprise when this one didn't!

 

In bottle: blue, but clean. Sort of the way I expect sheets that have been line-dried should smell (but never do).

 

Wet: Salty sweetness, like being on a sailboat in the sunshine. Laundry drying in the sun, and sort of a piney undertone (like pine trees along a Michigan lake, not actual "stuff a pine cone up your nose" kind of a smell)

 

Dry down: this baby lasts and lasts for me. A reviving, invigorating scent. Clean, not perfumey. I like this one a lot.

[fairnymph]

Sniffed in imp: Sharp, fresh, salty, soapy aquatic. Ozone. Something floral. Unisex to masculine.

[Raqassah]

Initial impression/ Wet: Marine. Seaweedy. Blue. Like sea minerals shampoo. Clean. Unisex.

Dry down: Doesn’t go foul on my skin like most ozone scents. Expensive high end mineral soap.

Final thoughts: Very clean. Pleasant but a bit too soapy on me. It would make a nice bath product scent. Maybe bath salts. Great if you want to be scented but not smell like perfume. Frimp.

[trollgirl]

In imp: Showergel, or laundry detergent. Very clean and fresh, but very uninteresting in a household product sort of way.

 

On me: Yes, definitely the scent of Tide Cold Water. Evokes images of laundry day.

 

 

It's inoffensive and light, but not my thing.

[gchris]

I did not know this scent existed until just recently. It was not on my list of scents to try. I have discovered through the months that the scents I thought I would like and the scents I actually love have different notes and are in completely different scent categories. I have been looking for a scent that smells like this, not really knowing if such existed. So I will tell you what this truly smells like and those of you that are like me will soon add this to your list of new favorite scents.

 

This smells like Dryer Sheets, clean freshly laundered linens, but better. Better because this does not have the chemical smell that most dryer sheets do. This smells like Yankee Candle's linen spray Clean Cotton. I really liked the spray but at the same time could not stand it because of the chemical smell in the background. Windward Passage is pure fragrance without chemical smells. I Love using this as a linen spray. I also wore it to work one day and 12 hours later I could still smell it on my clothes going strong. I know not everyone will be excited about this review as I am, but those of us, like me, who get excited when you see a review that reads "smells like soap", "smells like detergent", "smells clean", will run to try this scent, just like I did. It's better than imagined. The bladderwrack almost scared me away, so glad I didn't let it!

[greenranger]

Very very aquatic, but, cleaner smelling than any true beach that I know of. It doesn't smell like soap, quite, to me, but an unrealisticly clean version of ocean and seaweed. No shells, no fish, no seals, no people...just really clean saltwater, and very freshly scrubbed seaweed.

 

It's a nice scent, except that I am so rarely in the mood for aquatic, and when I am in the mood, some of the pirate scents suit me better.

[charshark]

In the imp: Salty and clean ocean.

 

Wet: An ocean that's just been invaded by seaweed. There's also something else there, which I'm guessing is the bladderwrack and it has a somewhat floral (like lilies) scent to it.

 

Dry: More lily-like, but after awhile, the seaweed becomes the dominant scent. Salty.

 

Overall: I like aquatic scents and this is one of my favorites that BPAL offers (I gotta say Lightning's ahead of this one still). It's relaxing.

[Delirium1009]

In bottle/imp: Clean salt water.

 

Immediately on skin: This is a very salty, clean ocean scent. It almost smells like soaps such as Irish Spring; it has that same type of crisp, clean feel to it. The seaweed notes give it just a touch of a green scent.

 

After a little while: This softens considerably into an ocean breeze type of scent. The seaweed gives this a slightly cloying feel… but that is very light.

 

Overall Impressions: This scent is very crisp and clean and has a nice unisex feel. It’s almost a quintessential “ocean” type of blend. The seaweed is a bit cloying on me, but the scent overall is very nice.

[Iceblink]

Strong, strong, STRONG aquatic. This smells like heavily-scented laundry detergent on me. A teeny bit of salt too but mostly it's just detergent and it goes straight to my sinuses.

[Pookstrell]

Windward passage has a certain 'damp' smell out of the vial, but luckily I don't get any of the unpleasant connotations mentioned by other reviewers

 

In vial:

Wet on skin: Wow, same scent family as Jolly Roger. Saltiness and ozone.

Drying: Ozone, ozone, ozone!

Dry on Skin: This scent morphs so quickly! All similarities to Jolly Roger have vanished, leaving a very dry, detergent scent. To me, this smells just like a very, very hot iron on clean cotton sheets. Almost scorched. No sweetness, just a lot of CLEAN.

Verdict: It's not so sweet as Wensleydale, nowehere near as sweet as Antique or Black Lace. Instead, it has more of the pungency and dryness of Dirty, without being *like* it, if you see what I mean. As a fan of clean scents, I think I'll dab this onto clothes for instant freshness.