Our route and current location:
https://share.garmin.com/RonRisden
For those following along at home - and at work - the Sail Blog app is just a straight line, giving our anchored locations - where we end for the day. That makes it look like our route goes right through several land masses. The Garmin track linked above, which I started in Powell River, is giving a fairly continuous tracking of our travels; showing the ins and outs (and backtracking) we are doing. Also you will notice that the dates of the writing seem a little off. I am writing several entries when I have a connection so the entries reflect that date. I will start putting the date we were at the location in the entry if I can.

We set Port Neville as our next destination. It was @ 30 miles or so - but we had to cross 2 sets of rapids that are about 10 miles apart. Green Point rapids are only about 1-1/2 miles from Blind Bay Resort and Whirlpool rapids are about 10 miles beyond that. It was going to be sporty to make both on the same tide turn in a 40 ft sailboat.

Needless to say this was the first destination, and probably not the last, where the rapids played a part in going to plan 'B'. We started off in good shape going through Green Point just before slack but as soon as we got through we realized that we would never make Whirlpool on the same tide. So we put the sailboat into slow mode (really - even for a sailboat there is such a thing!) and still arrived at Whirlpool about 1-1/2 hours early. We just hung out in the passage before the rapids, and in fact if you look at our Garmin track - you can see it; just a series of lines and waypoints going back and forth. As we were waiting - another sailboat came by with a full head of steam. He seemed to know what the rapids would bring so I tagged along behind. It was about 40 minutes early (before slack) but he charged into the current that was coming at us at about 4 knots. First he hugged one shoreline, then diagonaled across to just behind a rock outcropping, and then popping out of the eddy behind the rock he pointed his bow into the current and 'crabbed' across the rapids and out to slower water. I was impressed with this combination of skill and local knowledge so I followed suit and crossed successfully as well. Seems that you can be a little early if you know what you are doing and what to look for!

As we had to wait for quite a while to cross Whirlpool Rapids, we opted to forgo Port Neville and put into Douglas Bay in Forward Harbor which is right after the rapids. Going to Port Neville would have put us back into Johnstone Strait for about 4 or 5 miles, where the winds had picked up to @ 25 knots, and well, we just don't have much of a schedule ... heh, heh, heh.

Douglas Bay is a very quiet little spot tucked out of the wind that comes up Sunderland Channel from Johnstone Strait. It does get busy, and we found @ 7 or 8 boats already there when we pulled in. Still we found a good spot to drop the anchor and we spent a great evening out of the wind in a quiet bay. If you want a real treat - take a close look at the Garmin track as we are in Douglas Bay looking for a spot to anchor. Might make you dizzy trying to follow the lines.

In the morning we pulled up anchor pretty early, around 7:30 but discovered that we were late risers compared to the others in the harbor. By the time we left, there was only one other boat there, prompting Kirsten to comment that Douglas Bay is like Motel 6 - a lot of folks come and go but not too many stay very long!