June 22, 2020. Bull Harbour
After teasing us with a bit of sun yesterday, June has decided to revert to form, and it has been raining hard, all day. In fact, it started yesterday evening, and has been streaming out of the sky for 24 hours now. It’s not the typical West Coast, moisture hanging in the air kind of rain. This is pretty serious pellets bouncing off our roof kind of rain, tickety-tick-tick-ticking all day long. It is the kind of rain that makes you want to hole up inside, and discourages any thought of outdoor activity, unless being cold and wet is somehow appealing. Unfortunately, being holed up inside all day long means relatively little light on the boat. We could turn all the lights on, but rain and cloud also means no solar, so we have been watching our batteries slowly deplete as we run the essentials, and charge our phones and computers.
Holed up inside. Wine mostly gone. Coke untouched.
We started the day with the heater running, to warm the boat up from the 14 or 15 degrees it has been outside to a more manageable 19 degrees. Thank goodness our diesel heater has been working like a champ, ever since we have owned the boat. We took advantage of the downtime to have pancakes and bacon for breakfast. Then, Sara fell asleep on the port settee, while I read my book on the starboard.
I cleaned the water out of the bilge once we were both up and about a little bit. There wasn’t much in there, but it does seem to slowly accumulate. I’m not sure where it comes from, but I think it is somewhere towards the aft of the boat. It’s something we’ll need to track down eventually.
About mid-morning, we were listening to the marine forecast on the VHF, to try and get some sense of what is coming. Unfortunately, the forecast we are getting seems to cover all points north of here quite well, but does not give us much information on the West Coast of the island. After a while of fruitless listening, hoping to hear mention of weather around Cape Scott, we decided to see if our neighbours had their VHF on.
Sure enough, as soon as I called over to Sea Treasure, they answered. We switched to 72, and discussed our plans. They were planning to cross the Nawhitti Bar tomorrow at low slack. We mentioned our idea of going on the inside of Tattnall reefs, but heading out earlier, and riding the ebb around Cape Scott. Mark (which is what it turned out his name is), did a little reviewing of that plan, and called back to say it seemed like a workable idea, and they would join us with an early departure. We also found out his wife’s name is Claire, and they are on the boat with their 4 kids. We haven’t seen any of the kids – we only saw Mark and Claire as they anchored last night. They are from Victoria. Mark has been around the top of Vancouver Island twice before – he crossed Nawhitti Bar at high slack once, and another time went outside, around the islands, and stayed in deep water all the way.
Not letting up just yet
After chatting with them, we ate lunch, which was a warm soup and bagels. We then settled in to watch a terrible movie I had downloaded from Netflix prior to leaving wifi. Fortunately, it was so bad that I took the opportunity to sleep through it, and had a bit of a nap. Sara managed to make it all the way through. It was a Bruce Willis film called Trauma Center. Definitely not one of his better efforts.
Trying to keep busy, I went up in the cockpit and put oil in the new gas we bought for the outboard. We haven’t run it yet, since the rain has made it seem like a bad idea to go zinging around exploring in the dinghy. In fact, it’s back up on the deck, where we put it on the way into Port McNeill. With the current weather, I don’t see it getting down any time soon. Sara went to make pumpkin muffins, but realized she didn’t have the recipe, so we made do with the chocolate chip cookies we have on board.
We then watched another movie, called “the Gentlemen”. It was a Guy Richie film, and was true to his formula of a complicated network of gangsters all messing with each other. It was far more entertaining than the first movie of the day, and we both managed to stay awake through the whole thing.
Before dinner, I pulled out the InReach to verify weather. Then, while we ate macaroni and cheese, and a Greek salad, we listened to the continuous marine forecast again, making it all the way through to be sure we weren’t missing something helpful. The only useful information it provided was the current conditions around Cape Scott. What we really needed was a forecast, though.
Sea Treasure in Bull Harbour
So, after dinner, we reviewed my downloaded forecast in detail. Unfortunately, it looks like the weather window we were hoping for tomorrow won’t really come until Wednesday. In fact, tomorrow looks more or less the same as today, with ongoing heavy rain, and winds from the southeast. Not a promising day to round Cape Scott. We aren’t sure exactly how accurate the forecast is, since it is different than the one we got before we left Port McNeill. But, given that it is the best we have, we’ve decided to postpone our departure for one more day. We tried to call over to Sea Treasure to let them know, but they don’t seem to be on the radio any more. I’ll try again in an hour or so, but they may be disappointed in us tomorrow morning if they get up at 0500 to go, and we don’t join them. I’m not keen to go over in the pouring rain on a paddleboard, though, so hopefully we can get in touch with them at some point before morning.
Have you ever seen the rain? – John Fogerty
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