Day 7-9

So the Captain headed back to Vancouver on Sunday morning, leaving Nick, Gerry and myself in Port McNeill.  The boat is tied up at the government docks, leaving us with such glamorous amenities as shore-power and wireless internet (oooooooooooooo!!).

Gerry has some relatives living in Port McNeill, so we met up with Chuck and Bev on Sunday afternoon.  We headed over to Telegraph Cove, which is a bit of a tourist-trap type hotspot with a bunch of whale watching/related things. 

On the way we drove past the Beaver Cove dryland log sort.  As soon as I mentioned that I was in forestry, they almost insisted that we stop so I could take some pictures of the yard.  So here they are:
 

One neat part about this sort is the length of time that it's been here.  I'm currently reading a book about logging on the BC coast back in the 1950s, and the author mentioned working in camps located just a few miles from this sort.  That's pretty interesting if you ask me.

Telegraph Cove was pretty neat.  There was a small whale/ocean creature museum with a lot of bones in it.  Most of the stores/restaurant/tourist stuff was still closed as this is apparently still ‘early season.’  The entire place had a kind of Niagara Falls type feel to it, which you can interpret as you like.

Some guy walking by gave me a really strange look when he saw me taking this photograph.

After leaving Telegraph Cove, we headed back towards the log sort, where Chuck and Bev’s daughter and son-in-law had a float house.  The son-in-law has worked at the sort for around 18 years and has some kind of agreement with the forman to let them tie up the float house just next to the yard.  It’s quite an awesome little place (all hand built with salvaged logs/timber).

While there, a neighbor of there’s motored up after coming back from prawning.  In return for allowing them to clean their catch there on the dock, they gave us a bunch of prawns to have for lunch.  Just about the freshest prawns I’ve ever had.  Awesome.

This little guy (Chuck/Bev's great-grandson) was a freakin' prawn cleaning machine.

Sticking with my ‘dogs in the blog’ rule, here is Chuck/Bev’s dog.  Little bottle of energy.

Gerry headed back to Vancouver on Monday morning, so it’s just Nick and me hanging out on the boat since.  We’ve kept ourselves occupied with little projects around the boat.

Replacing a fuel filter in the engine room.

I finally hauled out my guitar the other night and Nick has been working on his sailing-making-skills sewing together a ditty bag.

Headsmack Tally

Nick and I have been keeping a tally of how many times each of us have hit our head this trip.  So far, Nick is in the lead (or losing?):

• Nick - 5
• Garrett - 4

Map of the trip so far

I know a lot of people reading this blog may not be familiar with some of the areas I've mentioned in my posts, so here's a map showing our route so far.

Yessssssssssssssss

 

That is all.

Day 5-6

“Is this a dream or what?”  - Capt. Speck

*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.