*I lost a bunch of pictures from these 2 days as one of my memory chips decided to die on me. Pretty choked.
After spending a day in Blind Channel, everyone was antsy to get moving again. We left the dock around 8am to head north through the Green Point Rapids. Again, navigating around here requires some timing in regards to the tides through these rapids. We arrived a bit early and milled around waiting for slack tide.
The weather was shaping up to be amazing. Patchy clouds in the morning with the sun poking through. By 10am, it was beautiful out. Not a puff of wind so the water was smooth as glass. We head North through Whirlpool Rapids, which turned out to be not much a rapids at all. Still, the pass was super narrow with epics mountains on both sides.
Before long, we were in Johnstone Strait, a large channel separating Vancouver Island from the mainland and other islands. This channel can whip up some pretty vicious winds (which we experienced later on), but in the afternoon it was quite pleasant. We had a slight backing wind and decided to put up the spinnaker for awhile. This was probably only the 3rd or 4th time Nick and I have put it up, so it was a bit of confusion getting everything going. As with our typical luck with the spinnaker, about 15 minutes after we got it up, the wind died and we had to take it down. Oh well. It was fun while it lasted.
A bit later, the Captain noticed that the spinnaker halyard wasn't rigged properly, so Nick volunteered to go up the mast to fix it. The weather was pretty much dead calm when he made this decision. However, by the time he got rigged up and started climbing, the winds picked up to around 15 knots.
Apparently it was quite exciting.
The wind continued to build until we were motoring into a 20-25 knot headwind. Needless to say, our forward progress was pretty minimal and the ride was not too comfortable. The initial plan was to push on to Port McNeill, but we decided to cut it short and stop at a cove call Boat Bay.
We laid anchor for the first time this trip (not as difficult as I remembered). Nick and I decided to row ashore (the outboard still isn't working) and play around in some drift wood. The dinghy is not the most comfortable thing for two full grown men to sit in. Felt like a clown car.
Back to the boat. Dinner. Bed. Winds were supposed to change the next day.
Next morning, winds hadn't changed much at all. There was still a pretty stiff NW wind blowing right down Johnstone Strait. We waited for awhile before finally deciding to chance and headed towards Port McNeill.
The wind eventually let up slightly and we managed to make Port McNeill in about 3 hrs. After a bit of an exciting landing, we tied up on the government docks near 'downtown' Port McNeill. This was to be Nick and my home for the next 1-2 weeks, as the Captain decided he was going to leave Sunday morning to go back to Vancouver.
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