forgive the typos. It’s 6 am and my eyes are still blurry

Morning. Breakfast. Work on the engine. After an hour or so encouraging noises emitted from the bilges and soon the old Perkins was humming along. All it took was a few phone calls and the only two wrenches Tim hadn’t packed.

In the meantime I had a shower and ate my third apple of the trip; that’s a bad habit I’m going to have to break. Somewhere around 10ish we’d fueled up, topped up the water and cast off heading for Johnstone Strait with predictions of 15-20 and no idea what the current was doing.

Well when we hit Helmcken Island we figured it out: it was against us and so we were motoring at 6 knots with a SOG (speed over ground) of somewhere around 2. Eventually we called it and anchored up for lunch in a small bay on the south side of the island.

Terry zoomed around in the dinghy like a kid with a shiny new bike and the rest of us chilled. We’d seen a few sea lions fishing in the currents as we approached but no one had followed us in. Damn sea mammals.

Then we were off again. The winds were a steady 20 knots on the nose so we decided to raise sails and make the best of it. I can’t say we made much progress but it was a good exercise and as the waves grew it was likely a smoother ride. Eventually we had two reefs in the main and the foresail furled in to about 90% and it was a smooth ride for the next few hours. At some point int he Strait we met a Holland America cruise ship that had Tim’m mother on it. He tried to contact the boat but was ignored.

By now we knew we wouldn’t make Alert Bay or Port McNeil before dark but we were determined to try. Tim’s actually pretty gung-ho on the whole night passage thing. There was one likely looking anchorage at Growler Cove on the north side of West Cracroft that we had as a plan B, and as we approached it at sunset our growling stomachs made the decision for us. We set anchor, shed layers and convened in the salon for wine and hot food.

It was veggie soup and samosas and Leslie was in heaven making smacking noises and stealing food off my plate. I think she enjoyed it.

By this time it was 11-ish so we went up on deck to the blackest night I’ve ever experienced. No moon, no stars, no city glow, just one faint nav light beyond the entrance to the cove. Eerie.

And then to bed.

[flexiblemap src=”http://macblaze.ca/kmz/VanDay4.kml”]
[flexiblemap src=”http://macblaze.ca/kmz/VanDay3.kml”]