Tuesday June 8 - Day 23

Leaving Kynumpt Harbor we headed west, back out towards open water.  This, understandably, had me a bit nervous.

The Captain says this ship passes his house in West Van.

How big were the swells going to be?

Would my stomach (or I guess inner ear?) decide to man up to the occasion?

Would Chicago win the Stanley Cup that night? 
Or will Philthy (no I didn’t spell that wrong) force a Game 7?

All these thoughts were running through my head as we pointed towards the big blue.  Thankfully, I felt fine for the enter 2-hour stint of open water we had to cover.

Before long we were back on the leeward side of some island, sheltered from the swell.  Before long, we came across Roderick Island, which is a landscape unit I’ve done some pretty extensive work on in my forestry studies.  Pretty neat to put an actual place to the satellite images and datasets I’ve been working with.

Roderick Island

Light station at the entrance to Tolmie Channel

Somewhere along the way, the Captain spotted his 2nd set of whales this trip (he's officially the whale-spotter on this trip).  This time there were around 4 of them, including some babies and a male.  They swam along the channel next to us for the better part of 15 minutes.  Bit further away this time, so my 200mm lens wasn’t quite enough to get any GREAT shots.  Still got some keepers though.

We've had pretty awesome luck with the marine wildlife so far.

Our long day of motoring ended in Swanson Bay, the site of an old abandoned fish cannery.  Only the old smoke stack and building pilings were still visible.  The backdrop was pretty amazing though, with some big still snow-capped peaks.  Can’t say I expected to look out a porthole and see snowy mountains anywhere on this trip.  Somehow forgot to get any pictures though.  Sawreeeee...