Haida Gwaii Trip - Day 2

We awoke at 5 am in order to get a nice early start to our Hecate crossing.  We were told that it can take around 15 hours, so we wanted to get as much daylight as possible.  Sunrise was quite pretty and conditions were nice and calm in the bay.

The weather forecast was for NW winds around 15 knots, shifting to SW later in the evening.  NW winds are great.  Not so much with SW, for reasons I will now explain.

Now for those that don’t know the area, the Hecate Strait is the large body of water between the Queen Charlotte Islands and the BC mainland.  From south to north, it’s kind of shaped like a funnel, getting narrower and shallower.  This can cause some gnarly conditions to form during storms and such.  It has actually been called the 3rd most dangerous seas in the world in regards to weather caused accidents/emergencies.  Anyways, southern winds cause the swells to move up “the funnel” where they get constricted by the shores and amplified by the shallow water.  In other words, not good conditions to be crossing.  However, we expected NW winds for most the day, which are prime for our crossing route. 

Leaving Arthur Island around 5:30am, we were immediately hit with 1-2 m choppy swells in “the Hell Hole.”  We had a very Deadliest Catch/Perfect Storm moment (well, toned down slightly/extremely) at one point when the bow buried itself into an oncoming wave, completely submerging and sending A LOT of water back into the wheelhouse window.  Unfortunately for us, we had a few portholes still open from the night before, so a large amount of that water poured in to the head and saloon down below.  No real harm, just a mess to clean up.  Thankfully, we got into Chearnely Passage and the water calmed down significantly.  We popped up the main, putting a single reef in just to be cautious and headed out into the Hecate.  Our crossing had begun.

Leaving the mainland behind.

Well, with as much unsure anticipation which we all had, our crossing was sure to be much less eventful than expected.  And, well, it was.  The winds set it at around 15-20 knots from the NNW, the swell never got anywhere as big as it was in the Hell Hole, and we basically sailed the same course for ~50 miles from one side to the other.  Pretty uneventful really, which in all consideration, is a GOOD THING.

This is one of the THREE waypoints we had to work with during our crossing.  Rest was all dead reckoning.

Conditions threatened to get ugly, but never did.  In fact it was bluebird sunny by the end of the day.

One kind of crazy thing was just how shallow it gets in the middle of the Strait.  We were probably 20+ miles off shore and the water was only 50 feet deep.  Definitely a shocking change from sailing up here in fjords that were 150+ deep, 25 feet from shore.  Right out in the middle, we ran into a sea of crab traps.  Spaced about 100m apart in nice straight lines, they would extend off as far as you could see in both directions.  I forgot to get a picture, so you’ll just have to believe me.

Within about 20 miles of Lawn Point, we saw the ferry coming out.

Like I mentioned, the weather was actually quite pleasant towards the end of our crossing. 

Nick working hard.

Just about there

The last bit of the cross involves a pretty narrow channel surround by sandbanks that were as shallow as 1 ft deep.  The channel is well marked with buoys, so it was basically a big game of connect the dots.  However, we were pretty happy to have encountered the ferry out in open water and not in that channel.  Would have been a bit tight.

That triangular looking thing on the top of that last picture is a pretty neat gadget of nautical navigation.  There was a marker light on the shore that, depending on your orientation to it, would appear as different colors.  If you were in the top triangle, it would look red, middle white, and bottom green.  Pretty neat if you’re a navigation nerd like me.

After the channel navigation, we tied up in Queen Charlotte City.  We arrived fairly early in the afternoon, so Nick, Alan and I decided to go ashore to scope things out.

Queen Charlotte City

Dock kitty

Best boat name ever?

We found a bunch of old abandoned machinery down on the beach.  No idea what it was.  Possibly equipment for pulling boats out of the water?

We stopped off at the Visitors Center, just in time to catch a presentation on inter-tidal species.  Quite interesting slideshow, which proved useful as we were experiencing almost 0 foot tides.

Back at the boat, we'd had a break-in. 

Sneaky bugger slid in through a tiny hole in the canopy.