Day 94 - Photos

We're in Port McNeill tonight with decent internet for the first time in months.  I'll take advantage of it by uploading a few photos - apologies for any duplicates.

A couple of people have asked me about the shape of Quijote's keel, so I'll throw these two in.  The photos were taken for the marine survey when I bought the boat in 2014

Captain Cove

Kay shows off her wine hitch for cooling the wine in the water

Princess Louisa Inlet

Quijote waxing artistic

Wrangell

What remains of a humpback whale vs a cruise ship

Good times

Kimshan Cove

Curlew Bay

Fitzgibbon Cove

Mackerel Skies and Mare's tails...

Sneaking up on Cape Caution

Day 93 - Whither Now Offy?

We have a nickname for the chart plotter: we call it Iffy. It's a name Vi thought of when it gave us a burst of temperamental fits, shutting itself down periodically at inopportune moments. Today it was more aptly named Offy. It got us here, but in the middle of trying to plot tomorrow's route into Port McNeill, it would not cooperate. I tried all manner of fixes without luck. The problem just kept getting worse, crashing sooner and sooner, until it was crashing while reading the chart data.

That seemed like a clue, but I had already reseated the smart card that has the chart data. Then I removed the chart card and powered it up and it still reported the version number of the card. Ah haa! It doesn't read the chart card at power up if the data is already stored in memory. Maybe that data was corrupted. Powering it up without the card and then re-installing the card and powering it up again forced it to re-read the chart data and the problem went away. Fixed? I don't know because I don't really understand what corrupted the data in the first place, but it seems to be working for now. I guess we'll see.

If the plotter goes down permanently, we can still use the PC (or the handheld gps) to see where we are, but it won't have radar or AIS.

We're anchored in a small shallow passage between two islands tonight. Pearce Narrows Cove is less than ten miles from Port McNeill, where we'll meet Mary Lou and Knute in the morning, spending one night in the harbor. We'll spend four nights with them, traveling south through Johnstone Straight (on a spring tide, no less) before we pop out of Seymour Narrows, around the South End of Quadra Island, and into Desolation Sound on our way to Nanaimo. It is a leg I'm looking forward to.

Day 92 - Back Around

We can't say we didn't have our choice of conditions for getting around Cape Caution. At the north end of Vancouver Island, it's the most exposed part of the trip, so the timing of it has been on my mind for several days. Hitting it at a sprint or lallygagging offers some control in the timing.

There are (for me) four things to consider: wind, wind waves (affected by the relative directions of wind and current), ocean swell, and fog. When we came north we were lucky (by sprinting) to find a window without any of the four. This time we were lucky again, but not that lucky.

Going yesterday would have dealt us an afternoon of big seas (wind waves on top of swell). Going today was much more peaceful: no wind waves, but plenty of ocean swell and fog.

The ocean swell can be kind of fun on a calm day as long as the direction isn't too objectionable. The more out of line the directions of the boat movement and the wave movement are, the more objectionable it can be. The ocean swell today was initially not substantial, but the direction of it rolled us around for a while. After we turned the corner and started down into the Queen Charlotte Strait, the swell increased to a couple of meters, but by then we were in line with it so it wasn't so bad.

While the ride was more comfortable than it would have been yesterday, the visibility was worse. We were in thick fog and blind for most of the day, had to rely on our electronics to see for us. The radar and the AIS system got a good workout. AIS is an identification system that commercial traffic is equipped with. It transmits position, speed, course and boat data, much like airplane transponders do. It's pretty essential equipment for dodging fishing boats and tugs with barges.

As is the case with most recreational boats, Quijote doesn't transmit AIS (yet,) but it does receive the data and displays the traffic on the chart plotter. That allows us to see the position of most of the important traffic - the boats that are large or fast, but not most of the other recreational traffic. To see the non-AIS equipped vessels requires radar.

I did some experimenting with different display modes today, overlaying the radar image onto the chart image, then displaying the radar image and the chart image side by side. I found the modes useful in different circumstances. Overlaying works well in cases where boats and small islands can be confused. Separate windows was useful for cases where one might want the navigation to be done at one chart range while the radar is set to a wider range to cover more area. Cool stuff.

I find that some boats, especially fiberglass motor-cruisers are difficult to see on radar, because they don't have a lot of reflective metal well off the water. Seeing poor targets in less than 100 yards of visibility requires vigilance of two kinds: one person seeing through the fog and one person seeing a flickering blip on the radar that comes and goes amid the clutter of wave reflections.

While that might sound a little dubious, even risky, it's not as bad as it sounds because no boater in their right mind would be plowing through that fog without radar and Quijote has an excellent target signature. High on the mast is a good quality radar reflector, so even when I can't see them very well, they can see us. If they're paying attention.

Day 91 - To Go or Not to Go

As much as it might have sounded yesterday like the decision was made on whether or not to get around Cape Caution, Kay and I went back and forth about it for as long as all options were still on the table. We even added an intermediate option to stop at Walker Island Cove to get us around the cape but enjoy a shorter day. We were constantly updating our thinking as conditions and forecasts evolved.

The shorter day to Millbrook Cove on this side of the cape would be 25 miles. Continuing on around the cape to Blunden Harbor would add about 30 more. In the end Kay asked me to decide and I went with the shorter day. The Pine and Egg Island lighthouses were reporting zero vis and fog. The forecast was calling for the wind to pick up this afternoon and then settle down tonight, which should make for easier seas when we get up early to go around tomorrow morning. Listening to the wind generator humming away up on deck, I think we made the right decision. We probably would have been fine going today, but why not do it in more comfortable conditions?

Day 90 - The Strait of Quijote

Civilization is encroaching. We haven't even rounded Cape Caution yet and already we're starting to see a lot more boats. Today we were caught up in what seemed like a flotilla streaming into Fish Egg Inlet. Thankfully the inlet is vast with several anchorages to absorb them all. Even so, there were three other boats in our little cove.

We decided on Green Island Anchorage at the entrance to Fish Egg Inlet for its proximity to Fitz Hugh Sound just outside the entrance to the cove. The other coves inside the inlet are several miles in. Positioning ourselves near the entrance was intended to give us the option of leaving as early as possible in case getting out and around Cape Caution quickly seemed prudent.

As it turns out, the rounding will probably go better on Sunday, so tomorrow will be a light mileage day. There's nothing wrong with that I say. I can do without the drizzle that's in the forecast, but at least we won't have gales to wait out.

We motored south today under wispy high clouds - mackerel skies and mares tails (make sailors shorten sails). Our fair weather will be leaving us. It was glorious while it lasted. Thankfully the front that is moving toward us will be dissipated by the Queen Charlotte Islands.

The Queen plays a big roll in this neighborhood. The Islands are about 50-100 miles off the central coast of BC. The crossing by ferry can be so rough that they anchor vehicle axels to the deck. The Islands also go by their native name: Haida Gwaii. South of there in the neighborhood of Cape Caution is Queen Charlotte Sound. From there, the passage between Vancouver Island and the mainland is called Queen Charlotte Straight. You'd think they could have come up with another couple names in that mix. It would have made it a lot less confusing. Heck, Haida Gwaii already had a name, so they only needed to come up with one. They should have asked me. I'm sure I could have come up with something. The Strait of Quijote?