15Aug09 So beautiful it makes your eyes water

(50'52.054N,126'14.956W)

From McNeil, we crossed back over Queen Charlotte Strait and up Tribune Channel to Kwatsi Bay and the little mom and pop marina that's there. Max and Anca and their teenage kids, Marieke and Russell run a wilderness marina in one of the most beautiful settings we've seen all summer. They are in a bowl that is so steep that landslides keep threatening to carry their house away, which very unusually for this area is actually built on land. Most homes here are on floats and very moveable.

We joined Crossroads on the dock, and also met Chuck who had bought a Selene 48 last Spring that had been tied up in front of Serendipity in John Wayne Marina. They were enjoying a long cruise of the Broughtons. Also caught up with Steve and Rolin on Intrepid, a KK42. We'd hoped to meet up with them along the way to Alaska this summer, but they stayed down in northern BC due to other commitments. So it was great to run into them on the way down.

Mike and Pinky on Skeena, a Nordhavn 40 that they live aboard in John Wayne Marina, joined us as well, and rafted up to Crossroads. We'd hoped to have them raft up to us, but Max said that the section of float I was tied to was already too weak for our boat and he didn't want to add another 50,000 pounds. That was a bit disconcerting, so I set my anchor alarm that night, just in case it blew and the dock decided to come apart.

Potluck and drinks on the dock under a nice shelter was the order of the day, with about a dozen boats tied up. I'm rather fond of potlucks.

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13Aug09 Civilization, or reputed to be so

(50'35.823N,127'06.243W)

We zipped across Queen Charlotte Strait in some moderate westerlies to dock at the Fuel Dock/Marina in Port McNeil. We'd stayed at the public marina on the way up, and were not impressed with the security of the outer docks (in 20 knots of wind, the floating dock was swaying so badly that it was hard to stay on our feet). So this time we tried the Fuel Dock, which has added floats and created their own marina.

It was first class, with excellent new docks and friendly owners and staff. Power was the usual (for BC) of 208v/50amp instead of 230v, but we are used to that and use our aux chargers and inverter to keep the 120v appliances happy. No problem. We stayed for a couple of nights, restocking and walking the docks to meet folks. It had been a long time since we'd tied Serendipity up, so this felt like a novelty.

Restaurants in Port McNeil are pretty poor, but we made do enjoying a meal that someone else had to cook and clean up from. But it was good to get back to our own cooking, especially with a freezer full of Alaskan salmon and halibut to toss on the Barbie.

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12Aug09 Caution in the fog

(50'54.336N,127'17.599W)

We headed south with Crossroads to round Cape Caution, bound for Blunden Harbor on the north side of the Queen Charlotte Strait. The fog closed in and took us down to 50 yards or so of visibility for most of the trip around Cape Caution.

One of the scourges of modern navigation, with all of us plopping waypoints down on our chartplotters or PC's is that when traveling around a protruding point of land and an infamous weathermaker like Cape Caution, we all seem to drop our waypoints in the same places. We look at the depth contour and pretty much pick the same spots, minimizing distance along the route. Then we navigate unerringly to that exact spot, plus or minus thirty feet or so.

As it turned out, a handful of southbound yachts all seemed to converge on the same point in the water just off Cape Caution, where naturally the fog was pea soup.

But once we got yacking on the radio and learned who everyone was, our little flotilla managed to keep from running into each other. I had my little 4KW radar zoomed into a 0.25 mile range (while the big 12KW radar on 3 mile range) and was threading my way through slower boats (there really are such things) by maintaining a 0.1 mile clearance, per the radar. Yet we still didn't see or hear the other boats, other than foghorns. That was mighty close in the fog, but we were all going the same way with relative velocities of less than half a knot, so it wasn't really dangerous, but it was nice to be able to spread my elbows and dry out the pits after getting past there. In the future, I'm going to set a course for 3 to 5 miles off any obvious turn point like that, not close in like everyone else does, and enjoy the ride a little more.

Of course, someone else might think of this radical idea and do the same. Scourge of GPS and chartplotters.

Blunden Harbor was clear and pretty and Crossroads rafted up to us there and we enjoyed a great evening with them and their guests.

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