Day 7

Day 6/day 7:

As reported previously from the internet café, we spent Day 6 completing
a short motor across from Cortes to Campbell River in time for slack at
Cape Mudge. Weather is building for the next day which would mean that
if we carried on, we’d likely be turning the corner into Johnstone Str.
with 20+kts of wind on the nose, against an ebb current; worst possible
conditions. Plan A is to stay here for another day. Plan B is to leave
early tomorrow to get past Seymour narrows and anchor north of the
narrows and wait there for good conditions; without having to worry
about slack at the narrows.( this was Robin’s suggestion which hadn’t
occurred to us – she is now acting as our “weather router”!).

We did a power shopping at the local grocery store; entered at 09:45 and
were out before it closed at 10:00!!

Next Morning – Day 7: we ate, topped up fuel and water and were underway
by 09:30 enroute to Seymour Narrows. We arrived 5 minutes before we had
planned to be there; having to jockey position with 3 south bound
barges, a large North bound barge that passed us and a large freighter
that passed everybody! The computer-as-chartplotter works well for this
sort of thing; you can adjust your speed and monitor your ETA to ensure
you arrive at the proper time for slack

As predicted the wind picked up once we were through the Narrows. The
narrows are about ½ mile at the actual narrows and Discovery Channel up
to Johnstone Straight is about 1 mile wide. This isn’t much and when you
understand that more than 1/3 of the tidal water flow to fill the entire
Georgia Straight passes through here, it is easy to understand how this
piece of water can get rough and why it gets the respect that it does.

It was so cold that I finally gave in and put on socks, having had to
give up on wearing shorts a few days ago. I ended up wearing a toque,
socks, 2 jackets and a neck warmer…this is worse than fall sailing. When
is summer supposed to get here??

We went into Kanish bay at the end of Quadra and further up into “small
inlet”. This is a hard to see, narrow entrance that has 2 meters of
water at 0 tide. Once inside it is indeed like a lake as described in
the book. Feels like a spot you could spend a few days on a reading break.

Ralph broke out his fishing gear to try to cast for some “rock” fish;
not sure what they are but I’ll let you know when I see one…so far,
score is Fish 1 , Ralph 0.

Unfortunately there is no cell phone coverage so I screwed up and was
not able to reach my Dad to wish him happy father’s day. I had also been
unable to call my Mother on her birthday.

We are anchored at N50-15.5/W125-17.1. this is the furthest North
Latitude that Tatoosh has seen.

Total Mileage for today: 19, total for trip so far, 168. Miles to go to
Port Hardy, about 100.