February 21

DE is underway again. We left Shilshole Marina at about 1400 hours. North to Alaska ( with apologies to Johnny Horton). Running all night this first leg. We expect to clear Customs at mid day on Saturday. Weather forecast is for snow and wet-snow. But at the moment , 0200, we have high clouds and great visibility.
Most of he crew is asleep. Rusty and Rascal are still trying to regain their sea legs.
We have done this winter run forms Seattle to Alaska once before. If you'd like to read about that passage, find the "contents" button at the right side of this blog page, click and scroll down to 1/22/2011. Cheers

February 22
Running all thru the night up Rosario Str, then into Canada's Str of Georgia with mostly clear conditions, until fog set in early in the morning. One of the crew, standing his watch, had one of those disoriented moments which happen at the helm, as a pusher tug came across the bow -- he'd just come on watch, likely still half asleep, and it does take practice to be able to turn a few lights in the darkness into a fully realized visualization of what is actually happening -- I had the same experience one night in the Verde Island Passage, PI. No harm; no doubt gave the tug captain something to talk about over beers with his mates.

Pulled into Nanaimo in soft snow at 1000hrs, same PetroCanada dock where we cleared Canada Customs in 6 July 2010, with brother John's family and Mac Ross also aboard. One of the agents coming down was the same who cleared us in 2010 and remembered an amazing amount of detail about us.

Underway again 1230 -- after a covert mission ashore for a supply of the coveted Nanaimo bar-- north around the west side of Newcastle Is and back out into Str of Georgia, brushing the west coast of Lasquetil Is. The plan is to head more or less right up the strait for Discovery Passage and stop at Gowlland Harbour, just south of Seymour Narrows, waiting for an 1100 slack tomorrow to transit (in daylight -- there is an earlier slack but before dawn and we choose not to do that again). We stopped to wait at Gowlland in July 2010 also, but weather was significantly different.

The soft snow of Nanaimo, turned to cold rain with SE wind and following seas. We put out the p-vanes to calm down the boat motion a bit; the fish haven't been in the water since our run down the West Coast in Sept '11 -- they appear to have not forgotten how to swim. In our January 2011 northbound passage we were taking a much more circuitous route thru the back channels on the east side of Str of Georgia in order to avoid the very big winds coming down the main passages as a result of an arctic high. It may be that we will do this winter's run more quickly than 2011, but it's way too early to say, and that's not the objective either -- safely and as comfortably as possible, that is the objective.

The last hour got a little stressful -- falling snow obscuring visibility; other boat traffic moving past and around us at higher speeds in a much narrower channel; getting in the stabilizer fish in the dark; last minute cramming on sailing directions / coast pilot information on Gowlland Harbour; last minute second-guessing on whether to proceed thru Seymour Narrows as we happened to arrive south of it with a slack (but defaulted back to that discussed above -- there are already enough variables in transiting the narrows which we can't control without adding darkness as well).

Gowlland it is, creeping in at slowest speed in the falling-snow-hushed midnight dark. Fortunately the snowfall was light at this point and we could see enough with eyes on deck and hand spotlights. The location I tied to a lograft and waited out a couple of hours for a slack in'2010 (in bright sunshine) was not there, but plenty of rafts further down. We passed on tying up to one -- too many problems to solve in the dark -- and eventually dropped anchor down in the southwest corner of the cove. DE hasn't dropped anchor anywhere since Sept 2011, so there was a bit of working it out, but it all came out good. With a quick check to make sure the house batteries would be happy overnight and everything electrical that could be off, was off, the crew of DE headed for their bunks... very, very tired.

February 23. awake at 0730, no dragging overnight; Gowlland proved to be a totally benign anchorage. From the pilot house, the view is 360 degrees white, winter, wonderland in falling snow. We dropped the dinghy and David, Dennis and I rowed the Rs to shore as Rascal just won't do his business on deck though Rusty has no difficulty dropping a load on the boat.

Back to DE, made a rush of Dorothy's great pancake and sausage breakfast because it was time to pull the anchor and hit the channel in time for the 1108hrs slack which we hit exactly on time. That was the easy part. Between blowing snow / fog creating limited visibility; swirlies pushing us all over the channel and the auto-pilot heading sensor being squirrelly -- no doubt due to a layer of snow ice blanketing its satellite signal -- we've been mostly hand-steering.

David C and I crawled around the decks and uppers removing as much snow and ice -- about 4" -- as we could reach, without breaking our necks or falling off the boat. Most importantly we tried to clear the GPS, heading sensor and nav lights.


1600hrs, just off Port Neville (Johnstone Strait) we decided, based on the weather forecast to continue north towards Queen Charlotte Sound. Within an hour we regretted that decision as the weather forecast for Tuesday showed up 2 days early, rocking and rolling in a following short chop wind/sea. We tried for a couple different anchorages, but they were not sufficiently protective for the 25-35 knot SE winds (with rain/snow). Growler Bay looked good on the charts, but once inside we found that a saddle in the hills at the south end of the cove funneled the SE weather right down the anchorage. Parson Bay also looked good on paper -- and may well have been -- but required transiting Blackney Passage, where the tidal rips -- in the dark -- were so strong, throwing DE about, that I hung a 180 and we continued rocking and rolling up Johnstone Strait until finally dropping the hook 2200hrs, off the town of Alert Bay (as there was no room in the inn, er... marina). Port Neville would've been very nice...