Day 33-july 14

Day 33 – July 14:

We had it all today; wind, high seas/swell and RAIN.
To make matters worse we had a SE wind, right on our nose again ( the
wind is supposed to be from the NW at this time….)

We could not stick to our straight line course we had plotted ( Rhumb
line) but had to tack. We decide to take more to the North to give
ourselves sea room to round Estavan point. After a couple of tacks we
didn’t seem to be making visual progress; I checked the chart plottingn
software on the PC and couldn’t belive it… although we were making about
95 degree changes in our heading when we tacked, our actual track over
ground was less than 30 degrees! At one point we ended up tacking and
were back on the same track we had 2 tacks previously!!. In other words,
we were going nowhere fast!

After so many days of motoring I was reluctant to ‘waste’ this wind by
motoring, but we had to get around the point before the afternoon winds
built up… so motor we did until we around the point and could change
course and sail again. We ended up doing about 50 miles to complete our
35 mile route! We had the anchor down at about 5 pm. I was too tired to
go ashore; since had a short distance the next day to Hot Springs Cove,
I decided to go looking for Cougar Annie in the morning.

It was a bit of a wildlife day; we saw 2 whales, quite close to us but
with the swells it was hard to distinguish if they were grey or hump
back.. all we knew for sure is that they were not killer whales. We also
saw a puffin fly by and what I think were storm petrals flying low
between the swells. On our way into the harbour a sea otter popped up to
great us on the way in.

Hesquiat harbour is very long, very shallow and has a bar ( a even
shallower section ) half-way. The bar helps to attenuate the swell so
that even though the bay is somewhat open, there is only a minimal swell
inside ( enough to rock us to sleep, but it was perfectly calm in the
morning).
The trip total mileage is now at 630. to top it off, the sun was out in
the afternoon for a while! The weather forecast is for NW winds tomorrow
so it appears that the weather forecast of normal weather with sun by
Saturday by the Nootka lighthouse lady is coming true.

Today’s position: 49-28.47N/126 25.08W