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!