fiordlands

June 9th - Kynoch Inlet

Technically, we're a sailboat. We have a mast and sails and all the accessories you need to sail. We have lines everywhere. We know how to tie knots. We can pronounce "leeward" correctly.

Don't let that fool you. We rarely ever sail. At least up here in the north. Most of the time the wind is either howling like a banshee or dead calm. And since we're navigating through narrow channels, the wind is directly behind us or dead nuts on the nose. There are very few instances where we have decent wind (8 to 20 knots) coming from a decent direction (not dead nuts on the nose). So we motor just about everywhere we go. Up here we're a powerboat with a really great VHF antenna.

However, every now and again, we will get a confluence of wind speed and direction that's just begging for a sail. And so it was on the day we pulled anchor out of Rescue Bay headed north into British Columbia's fjordlands. The sun was shining. There was a nice 10 knot breeze coming directly behind us. We set up the whisker pole, pulled out our genoa and shut off the engine. Bliss. We had a beautiful sail the rest of the afternoon up Mathieson Channel.

Our destination was Kynoch Inlet. Our new friends on s/v Maclas, Kara and Chris, highly recommended we see Kynoch. Since they've spent the last six years plying the waters of the BC central coast, we were hard pressed to disagree. Our friends Greg and Nicole on s/v Baraka seconded the recommendation. Kynoch Inlet did not disappoint.


Our fancy whisker pole setup finally gets some use.


A sneak peek into Mussel Inlet.


Mathieson Channel.


Checking out Kynoch Falls.


The view from our anchorage the next morning.

Dropping anchor was a little exciting. These fjords are very deep all the way back until the end in an estuary. The water depth went from 100' deep to 13' deep in about a boat length. So we anchored out in 100' and once again, thanked our new windlass for pulling up all that chain the next day. No sooner had we gotten settled in when we spied our first brown bear and her two cubs munching the grass in the estuary. We spent a rainy night at anchor and took off the next morning.

We continued north into Mussel Inlet, the fjordlands becoming more impressive the farther we went. We found another beautiful waterfall in Oatswish Bay. And since we're pretty vain about our boat, we decided to drop the dinghy and take some photos of Hello World.

June 10th, Windy Bay

We continued down Sheep Passage and into Windy Bay for the night. We woke up the next morning to the kind of torrential rainfall that almost looks like fog. Cockpit enclosure or no, we decided that was as good a reason as any to light the heater and spend the day in bed listening to the rain. Christy did drop a crab trap and took some photos of the fog that rolled in after the rain.






Pleading with us not to eat him. (burp)

52° 45.260'N 127° 53.305'W

The fallacy of free food

Someday, we'll move to a house and I'll have a garden. That's pretty much the only thing I really crave that I can't have on the boat. But I've found that instead of growing our own food, I find just as much enjoyment from fishing and foraging. If I don't have to buy it, I get pretty darn excited.

It has recently come to my attention (eh hem, Jason) that this is not, in fact, free food. So I did the calculations. Turns out Jason is right*. Not even close. Turns out I've spent a lot on crab and prawn traps, line, lures, poles, bait, you name it. We're were down to $54/meal there for a second, until I just blew $145 on an Alaskan fishing license.



How much is that store-bought crab again?

*I'm not sure it was the right move to admit this publicly...

Pruth Bay

Cruiser lore abounds up here. Where to go, where not to go. Go on the outside, go inside. As Jason likes to say, ask 10 cruisers a question and you're likely to get 11 opinions. But we universally heard that we should make a stop at Pruth Bay. A quick hike would bring us to a glorious beach.

And they weren't kidding.



It reminded us of Isla San Francisco in Mexico, but with trees.



Not only one amazing beach, lots of hidden beaches along the best trail ever.





Boardwalks galore at this place, I tell you! I don't know how far we hiked - maybe 3 miles and kept walking across boardwalks. Kudos to the people that lug those boards all the way out there!







While I found ways to entertain myself...



Jason found ways to entertain himself as well.



The Hakai Research Institute here seems to not only offer an amazing resource to the people on the central coast of BC, but also maintain the trails and take care of the cruising boats - this place is great.



Who doesn't like a place with yurts!!! Built on an old tennis court!



And the crab??? Best crabbing yet - 11 keepers in the pot at once. I started throwing back the "small" ones until I realized I could make some friends in the anchorage by giving some away. Needless to say, there was a crab boil that night on a giant converted fishing boat (with a stateroom in the old fish hold - love it!).

51° 39.244'N 128° 07.505'W

Grizzlies!

We've now seen 4 grizzlies! Fortunately, not while hiking, all from the boat. But that means we were far enough away that you all don't get any pictures. It also means that I'm now forbidden from hiking. And the lack of exercise has me going crazy (and when I go crazy, Jason has to entertain me). So standup paddleboards getting ordered and should arrive when we get to Alaska.

You might not get pictures of grizzlies, but expect some pictures soon of a very wet Christy.

past cape caution

We're once again at a wilderness outpost with a limited bandwidth internet connection which means no photos. Which is a crying shame because you all need to see this place. It's awesome (in the sense of the word before it was co-opted by teenagers: "inspiring awe; showing or characterized by awe").

After waiting out weather in the Walker Group smack in the middle of Queen Charlotte Straight, we finally got a break in weather (and sea state) enough to get around Cape Caution. For those who aren't familiar with this cape, it's a lovely bit of geography with a few downsides. Storms routinely roll down from the Gulf of Alaska with brutal amounts of wind. The wind builds up swell that can start near Japan and just keep growing. The sea floor rises abruptly right off Cape Caution to focus that swell into near vertical waves. And just for fun, on an ebb tide several local inlets shove bazillions of gallons of water in a contrary direction. The result can feel like sticking your head inside one of those paint can mixing machines.

We rounded Cape Caution in about 6 to 8 knots of wind, enough wind to barely cause a ripple. Even still, we had 4 to 6 foot swell with a 1 to 2 foot chop on top of it. We pulled out the main and motor sailed. Thankfully, the 6 to 8 knots of wind kept us steady and we had a pleasant enough passage (read: no barfing). We set the anchor in Fury Cove, just north of Cape Caution, and cracked open our second batch of home brew in celebration. The North of Cape Caution Ale was crisp, hoppy and delicious.

We're currently anchored in Pruth Bay on Calvert Island, another 20 miles past Fury Cove. At the head of the cove, an old fishing lodge has been purchased by a private group and turned into a non-profit research center called Hakai Beach Institute. Their mandate is to provide a base of operation for science and education groups to study the central B.C. coast. They also maintain an fantastic trail system out to a beach on the west edge of the island that is straight out of a travel brochure. (Hakai Beach Institute is also providing everyone at anchor free internet). We've chatted with a few of the staff and researchers and they've all been really nice and very helpful. It's been gratifying to see what some people in the world decide to do with their shitpile of money.

All is well aboard Hello World. We'll update with photos when we can.

(We've been informed our "Where are we?" link is not working correctly. Until I can get to an internet connection with enough bandwidth to fix the problem, here's a link to see the positions of our last three blog posts on Google Maps:

Hello World's last three position reports)

51° 39.244'N 128° 07.505'W