From Fog to Frolic

So much for plans.

When we got up on Monday, July 29, we saw beautiful tendrils of fog drifting down the channel past our anchorage at Matthews Island, inside the entrance to Quatsino Sound. It was fascinating watching the streamers twist and swirl in the breeze. It didn’t look too bad, after all we were in full glorious sunlight, so we upped anchor and made our way to the entrance on our way to Klaskish Inlet.

Um…a little thick, we’ll try again later. Later was no better, in fact it seemed heavier. So that’s what visibility of 1/8 mile in fog looks like. Little fishing boats, few with radar, shot in and out of the fog. With no radar ourselves, we didn’t want to go out into that mess.

OK, no big deal, we’ll wait until tomorrow, we know a nice place to sit and watch the world go by. Back to Matthews. 

Tuesday, exactly the same scenario except the fog was thick in the morning and Quatsino light was reporting zero visibility. It cleared to our usual sunny patch in the afternoon, and after the attempt on the outside failed again we went back to Matthews. Wednesday, it looked a little clearer, at least we could see the entrance to Winter Harbour, so we went in to stock up on water and food again, then went back to our little anchorage. 

What to do while fogbound.

All this time, other boats had come and gone around us. Fog was no impediment to radar, although radar doesn’t see logs, but we didn’t see much point in going out and seeing nothing for the entire trip. We’re tourists. We have a GPS unit feeding a laptop with location data for our chartplotting function down below, plus an independent chartplotter at the helm, so we knew exactly where we are, it is the location of other boats and large pieces of floating wood we are unsure of. 

Thursday morning, Quatsino is reporting visibility of two miles in fog. We try again. We can actually see Kains Island this time as we go by, unlike the previous days. A mile out it drops to 1/8 mile, and we decide that even though we can’t see far, we can see enough. We have to go far offshore to clear the rocks around Kwakiutl Point and Lawn Point, and as we come up to the waypoint to turn into Klaskish, I realize I can see Solander Island, from over 13 miles away. By a stroke of luck, we would get there at slack tide, there is no wind, and the seas are not bad. In an instant change of plans, we headed for Cape Cook.

I thought we would be alone on our misty trek across Brooks Bay, but we ended up in partially visible company, as the fog came and went, with two other sailboats, and there were small fishing boats all along the path. Here we were, challenging one of the most famed stormy points on Vancouver Island, and there are guys out there in 15-foot runabouts. 

As we approached Cape Cook, the fog lifted, the sun came out, and we had a glorious close rounding of Solander Island.

 The wind picked up on the other side of Solander, so we motorsailed to Clerke Point. After we rounded Clerke, we drove into another fog bank, with reasonable visibility, which lasted until we anchored in Columbia Cove, a totally protected anchorage just north of Jackobson Point.

There were already several boats in there, and after we set the hook the other two boats from the trip around Cape Cook came in and anchored. After a quiet night, all the other boaters rushed off in their dinghies for the trek to the beach across the peninsula. This is best done at high tide so you don’t have to walk so far across the mud banks. With the low fog, we didn’t feel like going to the beach that day, so we hung out on the boat, went exploring by dinghy and kayak, and generally relaxed. After the obligatory hike, all the other boats pulled up anchors and left. We spent the night as the only boat in Columbia Cove. 

Saturday morning, August 3, the sky was blue and cloudless. There was no sign of fog anywhere, so we loaded up the dinghy with cameras and hiking gear and rowed over to the trailhead. It was easy to find the trailhead, where was the trail? 

Abandon hope, all ye who enter here...

Ah, over there, a fishing float in the tree. It was a trail in name only, in some places it looked like a training camp for forest survival.

Yes, this is a trail.

Changing from forest march to beachwalking

Jim notices his Crocs are floating away...

Kayaks just outside the surf line

 

Anne checks out the treasures

Back at the boat, we loaded up and set off for the Bunsby Islands. Everyone says “you must go to the Bunsbys”.Another long detour around rocks, hidden and otherwise, and two hours later we had the anchor down in Scow Bay, on Big Bunsby. The Bunsbys are notable for being a maze of low islands and reefs, unlike the tall and steep islands that are common.  

 

One of the giant jellies that were present in huge numbers. This one is probably 18" across.

Sunday was “explore in the dinghy” day. We went all through the islands and checked out all the other anchorages, including the one overlooked by Green Head. 

We had noted this on our way in earlier, and wanted to see it from the other side. From the ocean side, it looks like someone carved “The Thinker” with a jackhammer, from the island side it is equally impressive. The Bunsby Islands reminded us a lot of the friendlier Gulf Islands, but the surf crashing on the outer reefs was a reminder that we were a long way from home.

Monday, August 05. 

I am writing this sitting at anchor in Scow Bay. Another glorious sunny day in paradise. Anne is out playing in the kayak, when she returns we’ll pull up stakes and head for Kyuquot for water and supplies. Hopefully we can find an internet connection there so we can upload. After that, it’s off to Dixie Cove on Hohoae Island in Kyuquot Sound, Esperanza inlet in another day or two.

Happy BC Day!

Over The Top

We got spoiled at Port McNeill, all those services like hot showers and fresh bread for the asking seduced us into an extra night there, but we weren’t quite ready to head in to Port Hardy for more of the same, so we holed up for the night in a nice anchorage in Beaver Harbour, as planned. Despite the 20+ knots of wind in the channel outside, only occasional riffles of wind would come over the hills into our chosen spot in Patrician Cove. It was really a one-boat nook, but a couple of young guys in a Crown 23 sidled in and tried to anchor about 15 feet away from us, explaining they didn’t have a depth sounder. I showed them where they could get good protection and decent holding further into the cove. I wasn’t about to go there with our 6 ½ feet of draft but it was a good spot for them. Looking across the water from our cockpit we could see Fort Rupert, the carvings on the front of the Big House and the red umbrella on the beach clearly visible.

Bull Harbour

Early the next morning, on July 20, we raised anchor and headed north again. Since we had provisioned in Port McNeill, we bypassed Port Hardy and went straight to Bull Harbour on Hope Island, the usual jumping-off spot for the Cape Scott rounding. We had been discussing the rounding with C&C RDV friends we met in Port McNeill – on Mareel, a C&C 29-2 like our previous boat- and they had told us they were going to do a 3 a.m. rounding to catch the high slack at Nahwitti Bar. The Bar is a very shallow area where the Pacific swells feel the bottom and results in large and confused waves, the main obstruction to getting from Goletas Channel to Cape Scott. The “standard procedure” for Cape Scott was to go over the Nahwitti Bar at high slack tide so the seas were minimized and the ebb tide would take us to Cape Scott. We mulled that over, and when we saw another sailboat disappear into the fog the next morning, I realized we had another option. We stayed in Bull Harbour for another day waiting for the fog to dissipate, installing hardware for the second reef in the mainsail, messing around with dinghy stowage on deck, and generally getting ready. The morning of the 22nd was fog-free and calm in the harbour, so we tossed the dinghy back overboard and towed it out of Bull Harbour. From all the warnings we had read about towing dinghies on The Outside, we expected that we may never see it again, but we couldn’t see around it on deck so it had to be either towed or deflated. 

Cape Scott in the distance

With no fog, we had the option of either going over the Nahwitti Bar, since it was low slack tide, or weaving through the kelp beds inshore of the Tatnall Reefs. We chose the inshore option. There are some huge bull kelp on those reefs but we didn’t hit more than one of the giants, and then we were through and on our way to Cape Scott. I had expected the 2-3 knots of contrary current that the guide books had stated, but for the most part we had about 1 knot against us, the waves were large but calm, and we made better time than expected. It was a good thing we dragged the dinghy, there was a huge amount of “drift” in the water, everything from small sticks to huge logs, and we had to do a lot of dodging. Compromised visibility at that point would not have been good. An hour from Cape Scott, a humpback whale came up very close to the boat and gave us a wave of his flipper and tail; that was pretty special. And after 20 years of watching out for them, Anne finally saw some sea otters, one close enough to see the brown furry baby on mommy’s tummy. Lovely!

As we got closer to the Cape, the seas were getting larger, so we were a little anxious about getting there over two hours before high slack, but apart from a few lumpy bits where wave trains collided, it was quite smooth because there was virtually no wind. 

Rounding Cape Scott was a little anticlimactic but it was exciting to have made it around this legendary spot, the furthest point west on Vancouver Island. From no wind at the cape, it was starting to build as we worked south. 

We motorsailed from there to Sea Otter Cove, the first shelter after rounding, and hooked up to one of four mooring buoys in about 20 knots of wind.

These are not your average mooring buoys, they are designed to hold multiple large fishboats during hurricane-force winds; they are huge and not pleasure-boat friendly. We left a dime-size chunk of gelcoat from our bow on the bottom of Sea Otter Cove as tribute.

After a day there, the next morning, July 24, we departed shortly after a Swiss-flagged aluminum cutter, who had pulled in the afternoon before, and motorsailed in company with them down to Quatsino Sound.

Heavy fog was just high enough off the water that we could see where we were going, and it cleared as we went along. Again, we started off with almost zero wind and saw it build during the day.

There were quite a few whitecaps on top of the ever-present swells by the time we got to Quatsino Sound, and the wind was over 20 knots, so it was good to round the light on Kains Island and go into the protected waters of the Sound. 

We worked our way up to the top of Browning Inlet and dropped the hook for the night. It was surprisingly windy in there, but we were too tired to care.  The wind dropped overnight and we slept well.

We hadn’t seen a lot of wildlife so far, except for our constant guardian eagles, a few porpoises on the way up Johnstone Strait, a few seals and sea lions and, of course, the whale and otters, so we were pleasantly surprised to see a black bear with two small cubs on the beach half way to Winter Harbour the next morning, July 25. Winter Harbour is the major provisioning point in Quatsino Sound because it is close to the entrance and has space for tents, trailers, and lots of sportfishing boats, who drag in salmon by the boatload. 

We got fresh produce and frozen meats, filled up with diesel and water, and set off into the Sound. There was favourable wind for a change, so we sailed for a while until the wind got a little too unpredictable in speed and direction, so we furled the genoa and motorsailed with the main. 

After a couple of hours, we came across another sail. It was very low to the water, and the first impression was that it was a mark that wasn’t on the chart.

It turned out to be a raft of kayaks with an orange tarp held up on oars. It wasn’t very fast, but it was easier than paddling, and they didn’t have much further to go.

We checked out a couple of anchorages before settling on Julian Cove, a nice little spot with excellent protection. A good calm overnight again, and a phone call (excellent cell reception, to our surprise, but we are only 12 miles from Port Hardy as the crow flies) to the Port Alice Yacht Club provided us with the information we needed: they have propane in Port Alice. We expected to find propane in Winter Harbour, but the dockmaster there said that everyone just exchanged 20-lb tanks in Coal Harbour. That didn’t work for us, we have a 10-lb aluminum tank that just fits the opening into the propane locker, and it was now only half full. So Friday, July 26, we set off to Port Alice on a full provisioning mission. They have a supermarket, almost, and we need to get ready for the trip further south where groceries are few and far between. On the way to the propane refill station, “just down the road”, we ran into an old friend from Victoria who had a car. He took the tank and filled it for us and brought it back to the market while we shopped. Thank you Paul! He said the station was way down the road and we would have been lugging the tank for a couple of hours. The “Shopping Center” had good prices and a good selection of things to buy, so we loaded up one of their shopping carts with our groceries and the full propane tank and trundled it the four or so blocks to the boat, then returned the empty cart to the store. The joys of cruising.

None of the guide books were recent enough to show the brand-new municipal docks that we tied up to when we arrived, and a phone call to the municipal hall told us that the docks were not officially open yet, plus they hadn’t got their moorage rates set up so we were welcome to stay there free - the first sailboat to stay at the new docks. As an extra bonus, one of a group of fishermen who had just come in with a huge mound of salmon gave Anne a fillet of Coho. They had so much they were wandering the docks asking everyone if they wanted some.

We were settling in nicely, and the wind was building, and the wave action started to get a little enthusiastic on the outside finger where we had parked Shift. After a while it went beyond enthusiastic and into potentially damaging, so we moved the boat to an inside slip. When the northwester blows in Neroutsos Inlet, which it seems to do most afternoons, it makes a large portion of the dock unusable in those conditions. Port Alice has a great new dock, now they need a better breakwater to protect it.

Laundry and showers (at the campground ¼ mile up the road), more shopping and trying to post the blog are on the roster for today. The nice young lady at the tourist info said she could unplug her computer so we could use the internet, so we may do that. Everyone here has been so exceptionally friendly and helpful that it is going to be hard to cast off again.

Update: Sunday, July 28, 2013

We cast off regardless in the morning, with lots of food and other necessities of life, but without doing laundry and without having internet access, and after checking out a few other local nooks and bays, decided Julian Bay would be just fine for another night.

It would have been perfect if it hadn’t been for snagging something on the bottom. It took some grunting and motor work to free the anchor, but we finally broke it loose.

We are posting this from the dock in Winter Harbour. Anne is up at the laundry and shower shed getting us all clean and organized for the next leg. We're planning on leaving for Klaskish Inlet in the morning so we are well positioned for Brooks Peninsula on Tuesday or Wednesday when Solander Island at Cape Cook is supposed to drop from the 25-35 knots we have been hearing about for the last week.
 Quatsino Sound has been interesting, but the astonishing amount of logging really makes the landscape a lot less appealing. We can understand the economics, one log is worth 30 tourists, but it's sad nonetheless.

On to the next adventure!

Through the rapids

We are finally through the rapids which block southern Vancouver Island from the northern section. Our track through the quiet back-eddies in the islands and fjords to the east of Johnstone Strait took a while to do, but we missed the 25-35 knots that Johnstone Strait was dealing out at the time, and we saw some beautiful scenery.

From Blind Channel Resort we went out to Cordero Channel and anchored for the night in a small bight formed by the Cordero Islands. That was right next to Greene Point Rapids so we could get an early start the next day. It was nice and quiet there, very peaceful, and the Greene Point Rapids and Whirlpool Rapids cooperated the next day, when we made our way to Forward Harbour.

Forward Harbour is quite deep except for one spot in the northwest corner where several boats anchored in 60 feet of water. All the boats are in transit, nobody is there just for the scenery. Many of the larger power boats have small fishing boats dragging behind, festooned with downriggers and rods. They are here with a purpose, and from what we saw, the salmon were cooperating.




After a night of deep sleep, we awoke to discover that most of the boats were gone already. We weren't in a rush, the last of the rapids were behind us. We headed out north at our leisure, down Sunderland Strait, and the final few miles of Johnstone Strait. It was a glorious day, sunny and warm and with the tide with us.

We ducked into Port Harvey for lunch, decided it wasn't nice enough for an overnighter, so spent another three hours finding our way to the Pearse Islands, just south of Alert Bay. We anchored in a very narrow inlet on the south side with a view down Johnstone Strait, had dinner and collapsed into bed.

Sometimes this cruising thing can be hard work, eight to ten hour days looking for logs in your path is very tiring. We had an easy day yesterday, going to Alert Bay for a look at the U'mista Cultural Center with their collection of returned potlach goods, then to Port McNeill where we are on a dock for the night, and for long enough today to do provisioning and laundry. Then it's off to Beaver Harbour, just south of Port Hardy. Hopefully the wind holds off long enough for us to get there. It's only a 2-hour run but the forecast is for 25 knots on the nose this afternoon, and that's pushing it a bit in Queen Charlotte Strait. We will hope for the best.

Paradigm Shift at the crowded public dock in Alert Bay

  '

On Track

We are sitting at the dock of Blind Channel Resort, getting cleaned up ready for dinner. It's very informal, and not inexpensive. It's Day 5 and we're on schedule. We traveled (I can't say "sailed" because that would not be true) up to Kendrick Island for our first night, then across Georgia Strait to Pender Harbour for our second night, anchored in Gerrans Bay. Apart from a one-hour round trip, having to go out into Malaspina Strait first thing in the morning to pump out the holding tank, it was a good stay. It was a good thing we took the weight out of the bow, it was a bash dead upwind to Grief Point, then it eased for the final 34-hour run up to Lund.
I jest. It just seemed like 34 hours, it always does. We bypassed Lund, and tried on the Copelands. Bumpy and crowded with people who didn't believe in stern-ties.We were tired, but not that tired.
We bypassed the Copeland Islands in favour of Squirrel Cove.

 

Squirrel Cove is one of the best anchorages in the area. It would be a shame to see it turned into a marina and casino. It may happen. 

Fortified, we made our way through the Yaculta Rapids to Big Bay on Stuart Island for last night. Interesting place, a community dock and it's not crowded with indigents and rotting liveaboards.  They must be doing something right.








  Big Bay is right opposite Sonora Resort, and it's a comparison of lifestyles. http://www.sonoraresort.com/ From what I have seen, I prefer mine. Not that I could afford that one. Mine is a little quieter and I don't need a helicopter to get here.

We churned off the dock early this morning to get through Gillard Pass and now we're here in the lap of luxury. Bouncy luxury, comes with the constant wave action from the water in Blind Channel boiling past our tiny divot in West Thurlow Island, so our little sailboat is heaving around. Our neighbours in their 60' poweryachts don't notice so much.

The place has really filled up since I took this, it is now double the amount of huge fiberglass motoryachts. Stunning.




As a post-edit, the food is fabulous.









Our lap of luxury? 35 feet of classic plastic. We have the basics, and a bit more. Hot and cold running water, forced-air heat, no microwave, no TV, no video beyond what we can get on the laptop. Fun times. Tomorrow we have to decide where we're going to escape the gale in Johnstone Strait. It's the first deviation from The Plan, and it's about time we did something not on the books.

More to come.
 

The Shakedown

We are spending a few days at home to recover from our shakedown cruise down to Seattle. Remarkably, nothing went wrong and we forgot nothing major. We met up with some friends in Friday Harbor and sailed down to Port Susan together, in tribute to Bob Perry's son Spike, who had passed away unexpectedly a couple of years ago. The "Spike Sailpast" drew many people by land and sea for the occasion, a good time was had by all and the singing and playing went well into the night.

We spent the night on Bob's mooring ball, and next day went to Blakely Harbor, where we met up with Kim Bottles, who is building a boat which Bob designed for him. He drove us up to Port Hadlock so we could see the build in progress. It was very impressive even as a shell, 62 feet of skinny double-ender...strip-planked with cedar and finished with epoxy and glass, it is a maximum day-sailer. Kim is threatening to bring her up to Victoria and is mad enough to say I can drive. I can hardly wait.
You can see many photos of the boat in all stages of construction; go to The Northwest School of Wooden Boat Building and check out not only this project but all the impressive things they are doing there.

 

From there, we went to Bell Harbor Marina in Seattle, and did Tourist for a couple of days. We walked the Pike Place Market and bought a few necessities, like Blood and Tongue Sausage and some buns. We saw some friends and met some new ones. And most of all, we went to see the Chihuly Garden and Glass exhibit at the Seattle Center.

It was phenomenal. The incredible vison and artistry in glass was truly mindblowing. We could have walked through there for days.We were lucky (we'll call it good planning) to be there for the daylight and for the evening, the outside changes by the second at sundown.

A couple of days in the heart of Seattle just before July 4 was enough for us, we needed a breather. We headed back north, through Port Townsend and back up to Sidney. There was a gale forecast for the Strait of Juan de Fuca, so we got ourselves ready with a reef ready to be put in, jacklines to clip to on deck, and our harnesses/PFD's and tethers were ready.

Nada. No wind, lots of leftover lumpy water and a nice sunny day. What's not to like?

Now we're getting the last things done on the boat. Today I finished the cockpit, redoing the non-skid on the floor and the seats with Kiwi Grip, an acrylic coating with lots of grip. I custom-tinted the Kiwi Grip to match the existing fiberglass, and it looks great. As a bonus, we will no longer slide to the lowest point in the cockpit regardless of footwear. We could wear bananas on our feet and not move an inch. We won't try that, it's a waste of bananas and they squish between your toes.

We should be leaving on Tuesday morning, providing everything goes smoothly. We are pretty well prepared, so we aren't expecting a lot of drama, at least for the first couple of hours. After that, all bets are off. Something critical could be missing, like scotch. We'll hope for the best.

Preparation

There are a lot of things to do before we can cast off the dock lines, and although a lot of them are done, there is a long list remaining.
The hull is polished, the bottom sanded and painted, the deck is washed and the sides of the deckhouse gleam with wax.
I still have to find enough bodies to haul me up the mast so I can fix a couple of issues with the rig and look for more. I'd like to find any problems before we're off the west coast. I need to replace the deck light, clean the spreaders and retape the spreader tips, and do a few more housekeeping chores while I'm up there but I'm not fond of going up...

I have to paint new non-skid in the cockpit because there is no more traction left and that's dangerous, and I'd like to install a rudder angle sensor to help the autopilot but I'm not sure I can get back in there without losing about 150 pounds. Even if I can get back in there, I may never get out without the Jaws of Life.
There is a slow, oozing leak developing from the macerator pump, and I don't want to do anything involving that unless it's totally critical because that drains the black water tank and nothing involving black water is fun. I have a replacement pump just in case and there are valves to isolate the pump, but it's still going to be ugly.

 On the bright side, our technology is installed and working, so far. One of the huge advantages we have over the pioneers in these waters is the technology available to us. GPS, reliable depth sounders, cell phones and VHF radios are the basics now, while laptop computers running charting programs are common. We have many routes sketched in to see what makes sense to do where and when. Sometimes it's hard to figure out exactly where we are supposed to be going, except for the need for northing.

    The first challenge is going to be the series of rapids we have to traverse to get through the Discovery Islands, which require waiting for the right stage of tide for each one. We aren't going to be totally bereft of creature comforts, there are many resorts along the path if we need to stop in for showers, or laundry, or a gourmet meal. Coincidentally, most of these are situated close to rapids which require waiting to transit. We are taking the scenic route through the mainland passes instead of going up Johnstone Strait, at least so far. If the weather doesn't favour a mainland coast approach, I have a course mapped out going up the east coast of Vancouver Island. It's all up in the air right now, it's three weeks out and I have bigger fish to fry.

The Boat

Paradigm Shift in the Travelift.

We have owned Paradigm Shift for over seven years now, and she suits us well. She is a 1984 C&C 35 Mk III, a relatively fast boat at the expense of not carrying a lot of water, fuel, and stores. We're used to traveling light. With 65 gallons of fresh water and 16 gallons of diesel, we have to conserve. No long showers, for sure. We do carry a couple of small solar showers, so if we can find fresh water we can top them up and shower in the cockpit.

 Just under 35' long, with a maximum beam of 11'2", she draws 6'5". Overall design weight is just under 11,000 lbs, with 4500 lbs of lead in the deep keel. She is going to be seriously overweight for this passage. She is a sweet sailing boat, and in our opinion one of the best-looking boats in any anchorage. We're a little biased...

We have put a lot of time and money into upgrading the boat to make it comfortable to live on and easy to sail with two people. An electronic autopilot means we don't have to hand-steer for hours, a forced-air diesel furnace keeps us warm, and we have hot water if we run the motor, which we have to do periodically to charge the batteries since our solar panels aren't big enough to keep them charged by themselves. No microwave, no flat-screen TV. There is a good 3-burner propane stove with oven, although we frequently cook on the propane barbecue on the stern. With an inflatable dinghy with a small motor serving as the station wagon to get crew ashore and about, we have a decent exploration range from the mothership. An inflatable kayak gives us a second mode of transport. You can see the kayak nuzzling the stern in the picture below.

So far, the furthest north we have been is the Octopus Islands, just north of Surge Narrows on Quadra Island. We enjoy the secluded anchorages and pure noises of nature when we're on the boat, so going up the Inside Passage in the summer is going to be a bit of a change for us. We hear it's actually crowded some places. We much prefer the off-season.

At anchor in the Octopus Islands, mid-September.

We're going to be moving quite quickly so we should be away from civilization within a few days. Sidney to Cape Scott in ten days shouldn't be too difficult if everything goes exactly according to plan (cue hysterical laughter).
 We are leaving the dock for points north July 5, all the stars being aligned correctly. Weather will be a major contributing factor in the progress of this endeavour, so nothing is written in stone.