Rain Drops Keep Fallin’

June 12, 2020. Gowlland Bay to Billy Goat Bay. 36 NM.

Or should I say Junuary 12? The theme of the day was rain and cold.

The wind settled down last night in Gowlland Bay, and we slept OK, but were woken early in the morning by pouring rain. The rain settled long enough for us to raise the anchor without getting soaked, but started again as we made our way out to Discovery Passage.

We were ready to go a bit early, and timing was everything, as we were aiming for Seymour Narrows at slack current. We motored slowly up towards the Narrows against a waning flood current, and navigated our way through various whirlpools and eddys that wrestled for control of our rudder. We were a bit early for slack current, so we waited outside behind Maud Island. Sara took the helm and held us in place while I went below to get out of the rain, and grab some breakfast to warm up. A toasted bagel and a couple of pieces of bacon put a little fire in the furnace, and I popped back up as the current dropped low enough to head up the Narrows.

We had planned and anticipated for a couple of days to hit the slack properly, so when we ended up going through with no difficulty, it was a bit of an anticlimax. The only challenge was the pouring rain. Transiting just in front of us were the only two other pleasure craft we were to see all day.

Approaching Seymour Narrows

Once through the narrows, it became clear that the cold and wet weren’t going away, so we decided to take shifts at the helm, so the off watch person could go below and warm up. Sara went down first, and cooked up a pot of corn chowder. After eating and warming up the cabin with the stove, she came back up to the helm, and I went down to ease the chill.

Doing 1 hour watches made the day go by quickly, and as the current turned to ebb, we got an escalator ride up the rest of Discovery Passage. At one point, we managed to make 9 knots, which is about 3 knots faster than our usual cruising speed.

Given our rapid transit, we arrived at our initial planned stop for the night at about 2 p.m. We both felt well enough with our breaks, and with the ebb still in our favor we decided to carry on past Blind Channel and aim for Billy Goat Bay on Helmken Island, right in the middle of the Johnstone Strait. En route, we saw a few dorsal fins and some arched backs which looked like humpbacks, but they didn’t stay long enough to make sure. We also saw at least one dolphin going about his business in the otherwise empty Strait.

We turned into Billy Goat Bay about half an hour before the current changed again. We ran the water maker for a couple of hours to put some back in our tanks after our showers last night. Now, with the noise of the water maker pump finally off, and the deli-made Shepherd’s pie eaten and cleaned up, the only sound is the kettle boiling, and the crows in the air. Occasionally, we can hear the “snuff, snuff, snuff” of a seal surfacing and looking around.

The rain has finally taken a break, but the clouds all around suggest we won’t stay dry all night. The wind is calm, though, and we are swinging lazily on our chain, as the last of the day slips into the empty islands around us. The only signs of man are the two markers I can see on the rocks at the entrance to the bay. Otherwise, it must look the same as it did to the First Nations people who preceded us here, or to Captain Vancouver and his crew member, Mr. Johnstone, for whom the Strait is named. Not even a clear-cut is visible, which is unusual for this coast.

Hopefully we can dry out a bit tomorrow, although the forecast is not promising.

In the mean time we will relax at anchor, and sleep the way you do after a long day in cold, fresh air.

Born to Run

June 11, 2020. Pender Harbour to Gowlland Bay. 59 NM.

It was a long day today. We started in Pender Harbour. The wind gusts eventually settled there, and it turned out to be a very peaceful night.

Still, I was up at 6 and ready to go. Sara wasn’t far behind, and we had finished with checking the engine, and were raising the anchor by about 7. It is still surprising to me when things work right on the boat, but the anchor came up easily, and once we dragged it through the water a bit to get the mud off, we headed back out into Malaspina Strait, and turned north.

We weren’t the only ones up at that hour; several boats were out picking up crab traps that presumably had sat overnight.

Initially, we had some wind on our nose, and as the day wore on, it faded away to almost nothing, so we put in another long day of motoring in calm waters. Our initial thought was to head north to either the Copeland Islands, or Cortes Bay on Cortes Island, with a goal of heading for the Seymour Narrows tomorrow. Slack tide at Seymour Narrows is around 11:30 tomorrow a.m., so we didn’t want to be too far away in the morning, as we need to hit the slack to make it through the Narrows. Hitting it wrong can result in currents strong enough that you simply can’t get through.

Modelling my foul weather gear

As we motored along, Sara continued to research our options, and realized that if we kept moving, our timing would work out about right to start into Discovery Passage off Campbell River tonight. We’d have an ebb current pulling us up the Passage toward the Narrows. But it would make for an almost 50 mile day, and there was no real room to slow down at all, as we wanted to be starting up the Passage by about 3:30 to get to a good anchorage before the current turned against us, and pushed us back down.

So, we checked the time, checked our speed, checked the wind, the weather, and the currents. Then we double checked all of that, before deciding to go for it, and head for Gowlland Bay on the east side of Quadra Island, a few miles up Discovery Passage. After dodging a lot of floating debris in the water, we set the auto pilot, and revved the engine up to cruising speed, and started to slice through the water toward our destination.

The highlight of the day was passing a playful pod of Orcas that we first noticed by the white water splashing up from their breaching. I even managed to get a few seconds of video of them passing, which is always hard, since they seem to dive every time you point a camera in their direction, and then come up just after you point it somewhere else.

        

                                                                    Orcas in Malaspina Strait

We spent the rest of the day using our time wisely. I did a few repairs to the bimini hardware, and adjusted some of the electronics. Sara kept busy cleaning windows and chrome on the boat, which desperately needed a wipe after a long winter on the dock.

We had grilled cheese sandwiches, carrots, and apples for lunch. It was so smooth by then that the only real sign we weren’t sitting still was the ongoing drone of the engine.

After a while, we realized we should take the opportunity to take a break, so I went and lay down for a rest, while Sara kept watch, and after about an hour, she went down below while I took a shift of my own. Shortly after I came back on watch, we were hit with a squall that soaked us down a bit, just as we entered Discovery Passage at Campbell River.

It turned out Sara’s timing and calculations had been right on, and we enjoyed the last 45 minutes of an ebb current sweeping us toward Gowlland Bay. As we turned south back into the bay, we drove straight into a gusty south wind, the same as when we got into Pender Harbour yesterday. It seems to be the weather pattern this week. The gusts were up to 20 knots, and seemed to come every 5 minutes or so, with calm in between.

We set the anchor in about 45 feet of water, in a large anchorage with only one other boat, and no signs of life around. We had all the space and swing room we could ask for, so we let out a healthy 5:1 scope, and set the anchor well, given the gusts.

 

Showing our Canadian colours to an empty ocean

Left over dinner from last night went in the oven, and as it cooked, we took advantage of the hot water from running the engine all day, and both had a quick shower. Then, another delicious deli butter chicken on rice with a salad, and we are now in the cockpit, enjoying the late sunshine that has finally broken through a bit, and the waning wind gusts.

As I write this, Bruce Springsteen is singing “Born to Run” on the Bluetooth speaker, and Sara is planning our next couple of days up the tricky Johnstone Strait, figuring out times of currents and distances between anchorages. Tomorrow morning, we attempt Seymour Narrows, which is still about 5 miles north of here. Hitting it at slack current will take a bit of calculating, and some good luck, since we will be motoring up against a waning flood current to try and catch the slack and then get pushed up on the ebb.

Wish us luck, Blog! So far, it has been a voyage of discovery, with some long days, and little off-boat exploring. But we are getting more familiar with Monashee III all the time, and it is great for us to get to know each other in these beautiful but tricky waters. After all, tramps like us, baby we were born to ruuuuuuuun!

See you tomorrow!

…Aaaand we’re back! New boat, new blog.

June 10, 2020. Nanaimo to Pender Harbour. 32 NM.

 

What a crazy time to be resuming the blog. We are 3 months into COVID-19, with some signs of slowing in B.C., but yesterday the WHO posted a headline saying that worldwide, we had reached a peak of new cases. Who knows where it will all end up? So, with that background anxiety, Sara and I have started out on what may prove to be a vacation, or even an Adventure!

We spent the last 3 days in Nanaimo getting the boat ready for a possible extended trip. We ran around like crazy, back and forth to grocery stores for provisioning, and in and out of Lowe’s and Home Depot for odds and ends to finish up a bunch of boat projects. We got the new Engel freezer secured, and filled it up with food. We ran the water maker, installed a corner wheel on our dock, and set up the new Dixon BBQ on the rail. I’m sure we did a bunch of other small projects, too, but left a bunch undone.

Nanaimo is cautiously emerging from the worst of the COVID lockdown, but people are still wearing masks, and social distancing. Most of the stores are limiting the number of people that can be inside at any given time, so line ups outside of people waiting to get in are common. It all has a weird pre-apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic feel to it, and made me very uneasy to be out and about, even though the official word is that there aren’t any active cases of COVID on Vancouver Island right now. B.C. has had no new deaths in the last 5 days, and our numbers are consistently falling. The world is sitting up and taking notice of Bonnie Henry, our fearless, and inexhaustible Chief Medical Officer of Health, who has steered the ship thus far. We are faring much better than other places.

So, that leads us to this morning, when we felt we had done enough boat projects to cast off the lines, and leave the dock. It was the first time since February that I had moved the boat, and I still feel extreme anxiety doing it. Sara and I talked today about how hard it is to leave a safe harbour and venture out into the unknown. Even as I write this, I still have some residual anxiety, although less than this morning.

As always seems to happen, the anticipation far outweighed the actual event, and getting off the dock was no problem. We motored over to the fuel dock, noticing a fair bit of white smoke from the engine, which we assumed was due to us not running the engine for a while. We got onto the fuel dock in the Nanaimo Boat Basin without much trouble, although came in a bit hot – nothing a strong burst in reverse couldn’t cure. After topping up ½ of both tanks and two 5- gallon jerry cans for a bit over $100.00, social distancing the whole time, we headed off again.

Getting underway, in full winter gear

As we got the engine up to speed, we really were making a lot of white smoke. I had done engine checks before we left the dock, and thought maybe we had water in our diesel, but it was getting a bit out of hand. There was water coming out with the exhaust, as per normal, and the engine temperature seemed OK, but I went below to investigate. I checked the water intake strainer, and sure enough, only a trickle of water was getting through.

I then looked at the through hull, wondering if something had gotten stuck on the outside, or mussels or something had grown into it. I’m not sure what I thought I could do from the inside of the boat, but wouldn’t you know it, the through hull valve was closed! I had moved it when I checked the engine earlier, but I must have moved it from open to closed! Which means last time I was at the boat, I had left it open, which I try to never do. Two stupid mistakes! I beat myself up for a few minutes for that one, but thankfully, opening the through hull and letting water back into the engine solved the white smoke problem, so visions of needing a diesel mechanic in Powell River didn’t come to fruition.

We proceeded across the Strait of Georgia, heading downwind in 10 to 15 knots of wind and moderate waves. Part way across, we saw a large plane flying low, and thought it was strange, given that travel with COVID is so diminished right now. We were further surprised when the plane veered and flew right by us, close enough for us to see its Navy insignia. It continued to circle us, and made three low passes, clearly checking us out. Around that time, we realized we were transiting Whiskey Golf, the torpedo testing range off of Nanaimo. We hadn’t heard anything about it being active on the VHF. Usually they make some kind of announcement, or sometimes specifically advise a boat to get out! We tried to figure out why the plane was so interested in us. We thought maybe he was making sure we weren’t Americans, who had crossed the border illegally during the COVID closures. We grabbed our Canadian flag, and put it in its holder on the stern, but by the time that was done, the plane had lost interest. We were also exiting Whiskey Golf about the same time, so we weren’t sure if he was just giving us a strong hint, or simply flying a pattern out of Comox. Anyway, nothing came over the VHF, and we continued on our way.

Seeing a little sunshine in the Strait of Georgia

We pulled into a gusty Pender Harbour around 1 p.m., but Gerrens Bay, where we had found a lovely anchorage last year, was full of derelict boats, spaced just close enough to make anchoring awkward, so we headed over to Garden Bay. It, too, had limited anchoring space. There were actually only a few anchored boats, but there were enough boats on mooring balls to leave little space for another boat. We ended up dropping anchor right at the entrance to Garden Bay, where we proceeded to swing hard on the powerful gusts coming down out of the mountains for the next few hours. Fortunately, the forecast for easing winds overnight seems to have proved right, and we are more settled right now. We aren’t far from the Seattle Yacht Club docks, which are, of course, empty due to COVID and the border closure. It might have been nice to tie up there, but somehow, I suspect even with empty docks they still wouldn’t want non-members there. Maybe I’m wrong.

Anyway, we are securely anchored. Sara has just made a delicious dinner of butter chicken on rice, which she got from the deli prior to our departure. We topped it off with vanilla yogurt and canned peaches. Simple, but it really hit the spot. I don’t usually feel like eating much when I’m first on the boat, but I’m feeling better now with some food in my stomach.

Sara seems to pick up her spirit and energy when mine is down. With little sleep, and anxiety about getting underway, I’m at a bit of a low point right now, but she is powering me through with great food, and keeping me going. She also spent the evening planning the rest of our trip. We are going to keep pushing north, with the possibility of a week in the Broughtons, and Sara flying back from Port Hardy, or, if we want to keep moving, we might start around Vancouver Island, with Sara flying back from Tofino. She has three weeks, where I have pretty much the whole summer before I have to be back in the ICU, so the current thought is that I will keep going alone when she heads back.

We’ll have to see if I have the nerve and the sense of adventure for that. It’s what I’ve been dreaming of all winter, and my plan with this boat was to make it so that I could single-hand it. The fatigue of getting ready for this simple trip has dampened my spirit a bit as of right now, but I’m sure it will pick up as we get more comfortable, and I get more sleep!

Right now, we have “the House of the Rising Sun” playing on the speaker over Spotify. The wind seems to have settled, and the inside of the boat is finally quiet, and comfortable. I think I’ll sleep better tonight, but will surely have one ear open for unusual noises. The anchor alarm is set, though, so if I can trust in that, I’ll be rested and ready to push on tomorrow.

Good night blog! Here’s to a good sleep, and less stress tomorrow.