24Aug09 Home Sweet Home

(48'03.767N,123'02.277W)

An easy run from Montague Harbor to Sequim. We had thick fog starting five miles south of sunny Montague Harbor, but after Alaska, that was no issue.

We reached the entrance of Sequim Bay with a sailboat in front of us who was clearly having trouble finding his way in, given the tricky entrance and thick fog. He slowed and let us pass him, barely visible fifty yards away, and I thought he'd follow us in, but apparently he lost sight of us. If not for another boat behind them, they probably would have gone aground, given they were getting way too close to the spit. I heard the folks on a powerboat hollering at them over the loud hailer to "turn right, turn right" right after they passed the red buoy on the way in. That's a strange entrance if you don't know it.

Naturally, those two boats reappeared from the fog right at the marina entrance a while later, which the sailboat had initially missed in the fog and was coming from the wrong direction. Thanks for the radar. The powerboat was the Tolleycraft that ties up right next to us, and the sailboat tied up down on the guest dock. They were heading back down to their home in Oregon and didn't know the Sequim Bay entrance. They were happy to be back on land when I stopped by to say Hi.

So, we're back in port for a bit. Plan is to run down to LA (during the fires no less!) to see Kellie and Nick and grandson Nate (his first birthday!) along with son Eric. We'll be back up in Sequim on the 9th or so and get back on the boat and enjoy what is left of the nice weather.

The Gulfs and San Juans and the Strait of Georgia up to Desolation Sound are great places to cruise after Labor Day (or prior to mid-June). We avoid that area between those times, but love the Fall there. Lots of great anchorages and little villages to visit, several with farmers markets full of local produce and Fall finery.

So. more cruising to come around mid-September.

22-23Aug Dodging cruise ships and logs at night

(50'03.089N,125'13.445W)

We started a fast run back down to Sequim today, leaving the end of Knight Inlet and heading the first day to Port Neville on Johnstone Strait. This has always been a favorite stop of ours, and given we had to time both Race Passage and Seymour Narrows, on spring tides no less, we had to get positioned first.

We headed out of Neville on the dying ebb, found it a little bumpy with some residual westerly against the tide, but hit Race at slack and then let the flood drift us the 20 some miles down to Seymour Narrows. We were way early for those rapids, which run at 14+ knots on the springs, so we dropped the hook in Plumper Bay and took a nap for a few hours.

Seymour was flat at 1900, but we had to fight the growing ebb down Discovery Passage afterward, and that's where I made my worst judgment call on an anchorage of this entire trip. We didn't want to go into the marina, so I picked the furthest south anchorage that was listed in the Douglas guide: Quathiaski Cove. We anchored in the north end in a spot that was supposed to be out of the current.

The anchor landed on solid rock and didn't bite very well, but I figured we'd be OK. It was almost dark and the only other anchorage was back a few miles the way we'd just came, and my Rocna had never dragged, so I decided to stay put. It wasn't supposed to blow.

At O-Dark-30 (why does the sh*t always hit the fan at half past midnight?) the chain started rattling like crazy and I got up to watch. The boat was swinging around in spectacular fashion, caught in what looked like a lot of current, with the boat swinging left until it finally jerked like crazy on the chain, and then right to do the same. No wind, but crazy current coming around a curve in the north end of the cove. Every time it spun to a stop against the chain, there was a loud bang and crunch from the ground tackle. Not good. I figured the anchor set, such as it was on rock, couldn't take much of that abuse.

Sure enough, at 1:00am, the anchor lost its bite and we started to drag like crazy. All around us were docks from the houses that line the cove. I started the engine, put the boat in gear forward, and was astonished to find we were STILL going backwards against combined power of both dragging anchor and engine. I poured on some power and managed to get back to the anchor location, and Debbie cranked it up.

Resetting was out of the question in that current, so I bailed out of the cove, fighting current that wanted to swing the boat 30 degrees left and right. Rocks were close on both sides, but it was too dark to see anything except with radar, especially with the lights of Campbell River across Discovery Passage blinding me. We popped out of the cove only to find ourselves facing a thousand foot cruise ship that was blasting along just off the shore.

I was playing catch up and turned the radio on just in time to hear to cruise ship captain talking to VTS about an "unknown boat without running lights exiting in front of them". He sounded really worried. I had my AIS on, so they could see me coming on a collision course.

I found the Nav light switch, which the cruise ship immediately reported they'd seen, but now it was difficult to stay off the rocks given I was blinded by the zillion megawatt glare of the ship, which was close enough to count rivets. I wound up ducking back into the south end of the cove in what had to be six knots of current that was running anything but straight, and let the ship pass. Then, when I started to pop out, another cruise ship was right there. They travel in packs.

Between chart plotter and radar and using all 35 degrees of rudder, we stayed off the rocks long enough for the second ship to pass. After that, I said to hell with anchoring and Deb stared at the FLIR (Forward Looking Infrared Radar) to spot the logs that Discovery Passage is infamously full of, especially on these heavy spring tides, and I navigated us southward.

We didn't hit any logs, although I had to dodge one black mass that showed up on the FLIR but not the radar, and by first light we were south of Comox.

So much for our first night passage in log-infested waters. Not planned.

Weather and sea were comfy, 15 knots pushing us along, but the afternoon forecast was for it to blow, and we were tired, so we decided to duck out of Georgia Strait at Gabriola Pass (we missed the timing for Dodd Narrows) and wound up passing through some narrow channels just off Silva Bay when what had to be a hundred sail boats decided to erupt from the bay to head in all directions, many of them toward Gabriola with us. We didn't hit any, and they returned the favor, despite it getting really crowded in one narrow spot. Never seen so many sailboats in one place, but it was Sunday afternoon on a mid-August weekend.

Once through Gabriola and past the sea of sailboats, the water was flat, the sun was hot and we were back to Gulf Islands cruising at its finest. Phil on Bloomin' Fool called on the cellphone (it really did work again!) saying they were northbound at Orcas Island in the San Juans and could we meet up that evening. We suggested Montague Harbor in the Canadian Gulfs, and they cleared Canadian customs at Bedwell and met us there. Phil, Tammi and their guests. Weather was perfect and we had a great evening drinking lots of Phil and Tammi's homemade wine.

Given they live in the Wenatchee area, right in the heart of the famous Western Washington/Columbia River wine making region, they have access to not only the best grapes (which Phil buys by the ton), but he makes extraordinary wine. It ranks right up there with the professional stuff. And after our long day yesterday, which started in Port Neville and ended up in Montague Harbor, we were ready to drink. The bottom has perfect holding there and it wasn't too crowded and there was no wind. Good sleeping night.

We're going to go out and help them crush grapes and get it barreled this next Fall, but for now Phil left us with enough bottles to enjoy until then. A great evening following a rather interesting two days.

16-21Aug09 Secret of secrets

(50'58.229N,125'34.893W)

We departed Kwatsi with Mike and Pinky, traveling with Skeena to Mike's super-secret fishing holes. I've been sworn to secrecy, so can only say that we cruised up to near the end of Knight Inlet, which is infamously difficult to find anchorage in and known for its ugly winds. The inlet runs 70 miles back into the BC mountains, which become so steep that I swore I was going to get a nosebleed from altitude sickness. It was hard to believe we were still at sea level and floating that far inland with mile high snow-capped mountains dropping straight down to the water all around us.

Of course, after the long, hot summer and lack of rain this year, the snow was almost gone and very few of the waterfalls were running. It was really dry up there. In many areas, the freshwater formed a layer about 15 feet down that the sonar couldn't see through without manual tuning. Depth sounders kept saying we were in 15 feet when the chart said 1500 feet.

I can't talk about the fishing, other than to say that Mike managed to catch some absolutely huge (roughly 20 pound) Cohos on a tiny Steelhead spinning rod. Monsters of the deep. Can't say where we were, however.

I will say that the anchorages were pretty iffy and challenging to find the right place to put the hook down. When we did, we found loose rock. The shores were so steep-to that even when dropping the hook in 120 feet of water, the back end of the boat was perilously close to the shore. I don't like stern ties in open locations like we were in, they're dangerous if the wind comes up, so we had to anchor deep to get swinging room against the shore.

We'd had a few very quiet days, and figured this would be another night of the same, but as soon as we commented on that, the wind came up, gusting to 30 knots for a bit. We were having dinner on Skeena when it started to really blow, and we had to dive into our wildly bucking dink to head back to Serendipity (before desert) because it looked as if it was about to land on the shore. Anchor wasn't really dragging as it turns out, but with the chain stretched out, we had 10 feet under the back of the boat and 20 feet at the middle of the boat (difference of two sounder locations). The bow was probably in 30+ feet. I didn't like that, so we fired up and pulled the hook and reset further from shore. Then the wind blew us all around the anchor all night, with every puff seemingly from a different direction. Sometimes we had 170 feet under the boat, and others times 40 feet, with the anchor set part way down a very steep slope.

I figured if it was going to pull out, it would do that when we were heading out into the bay, and that was OK. Water was 300 feet deep only a couple of hundred feet further out. I just didn't want the wind to pull that anchor up the slope and put us on land.

As it turned out, the anchor held fine and we slept OK.

We only saw one other cruising boat in the upper half of Knight Inlet, a Selene about our size, but they went back down without trying to anchor. So we had it to ourselves. No radio reception, no satellite. Just like parts of Alaska. Very wild. Signs of grizzly everywhere on shore, but we didn't see any. The fish were going up the streams and Mike figured the grizzers were up in the stream where it's easier to fish. Despite having pepper spray and my 12 gauge, we decided not to walk up the stream to confirm that.

We spent the better part of a week in three anchorages, but I can't say where.

Knight Inlet is highly recommended for the adventurous cruiser who wants some great fishing, but only in settled weather with oversized ground tackle and a fair bit of experience in handling rocky, steep-to anchorages.