This is our 9th night out since leaving the dock at PYC very early on the morning of June 19th. We caught the front edge of the ebb and rode that all the way out into the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Then as it switched to an afternoon flood tide, we motored right into the middle of the San Juan Islands and dropped a hook in Blind Bay on Shaw Island. Getting into the San Juans would help us avoid an adverse early morning ebb tide as we continued to push north. All the delays working at home then waiting out some weather had truly turned this into a delivery trip, and that’s what we’ve been doing for 9 days now. Here’s a visual of the miles we’ve been making:
We spent two days at our first anchorage so Rob could run back home and get his drone, then we charged on through the Gulf Islands, making a quick overnight at Montague Harbor. On another trip we would have lingered at all of these stops longer, but we pushed on the next morning after morning slack in Dodd Narrows and took the reciprocal guest dock at the Nanaimo Yacht Club. Here’s a fun side by side of our two transits of Dodd Narrows. The left is from April 2006 when we were heading to Mexico and off around the Pacific, and the right from this week. We came through a very narrow passage with 2+ knots of opposing current and I was definitely focusing on the boat both times.
We left Nanaimo and had a long day into a quiet anchorage where we watched some eagles hunting for entertainment. The next morning we had a “sporty” day heading upwind on the edge of the Strait of Georgia. It was no fun watching another boat actually hoist sails and head northwest toward Desolation Sound as we bashed due north. By the time we got tied up to the dock in Campbell River we had been pushing hard for 4 days and decided to take a rest day. It would give us time to get the last of our provisions, fill propane, and do a quick load of laundry.
Monday morning slack in Seymour Narrows wasn’t until 12:45, and we were only 8 miles from there. So we waited at the dock until 10:30, calculating that we were comfortable going through with a 2 knot opposing current and it would take about an hour and a half to get there. We timed it just right and had an uneventful transit through the last of our narrows for the summer. About 1:30 we passed a lovely anchorage and thought about stopping, knowing the current was changing and what happens in Johnstone Strait when wind opposes current. Think Strait of Juan de Fuca, only worse. Worse than Haro Strait. Just about as bad as it gets up here. But we just thought we hadn’t made enough miles, passed the anchorage, turned the corner and saw calm waters in the Strait. So I laid down for a nap.
Within 20 minutes the water went from calm to complete crap. The entire front half of the boat was coming out of the water and we were nearly stopped every time we hit one of the big waves. We were taking water up over the bimini, and Rob was getting a very unwanted saltwater bath. Time to find an escape route. We saw the two boats ahead of us take a hard right into a channel and we followed. The pic above is the anchorage, and what a difference a few corners can make.
Here is the channel we were heading up from the Narrows, the little bay called Rock Bay where we should have stopped, and Blind Channel where we ended up. So we had a quiet night and set a 5am alarm. We were off the hook by 5:20 and headed back toward Johnstone Strait. The wind was blowing 10-15 already but the waters were basically flat and we made good time with a small current push. But the forecast was for Strong Wind Warning in Johnstone Strait, with winds increasing to 25 in the afternoon. So we calculated how far we could get without getting hammered two days in a row. Turns out there was a good anchorage at 10:00, but the next one was 2 hours further on. We decided to just take the early stop this time, and had our evening hook down by 10 am. This is definitely something we’ve never done in the Salish Sea before. It’s breezy here in this anchorage, but we can see the Strait and what we don’t see is anyone else out there in it. Our alarm is set for 5:00 again and we’ll get up and make miles tomorrow morning. Hopefully we can be done with Johnstone Strait before tomorrow’s forecast 30 knot winds show up.
