Princess Louisa Inlet, 2 6/8/13

Cruise to Princess Louisa Inlet

Second Installment:  June 3, 2013 to June 8, 2013

Silva Bay, BC, anchorage to Princess Louisa Inlet and back to La Conner

The end of the first installment to Princess Louisa Inlet left us at Silva Bay.  We stayed there, waiting on the weather to calm in the Strait of Georgia.  Jerry and I, Jim and Christie Caldwell, and Jim’s brother, Chuck (with whom we were cruising) took advantage of our stay at Silva Bay to take a hike to Drumbeg Park, through the temperate rain forest.  We came across this old 56 Chevy, slowly rusting along the trail and Jim Caldwell could not resist posing for the cameras!

The park has a fabulous view of Gabriola Passage and the route we had taken just a few days before.  Silva Bay is just around the corner from here.  We had a warm, sunny afternoon for our walk and enjoyed stretching our legs.  We met a man at the park who lived just west of Gabriola Passage.  He had retired there after a career in Vancouver.  He said it was glorious place to live!  Their weather was very mild, since they lived so close to the water.

Finally, on Monday, June 3, the winds across the Strait of Georgia sounded do-able.  For us that means less than 20 knots and not opposing the water flow.  It wasn’t the smoothest crossing we’ve had, but with the wind behind us we crossed quickly.  In the photo you can see NOETA coming up on our port beam and just the barest hint of white caps.

We decided we liked crossing from Silva Bay, rather than Nanaimo, as we’ve done in the past.  This route put us in a more direct approach to Merry Island light and Welcome Passage.  At this point, we’re back on the British Columbia mainland side of the Strait and more protected water.

We cruised north up Agamemnon Channel and saw this interesting trailer house on stilts in a little fishing settlement.  Rather a unique way to deal with the housing shortage!

It took us about 5.5 hours to cruise the 45 miles between Silva Bay and this night’s stop at the little settlement of Egmont.  We moored at Backeddy Marina, rather than the public dock.  Even though the public dock is “public” it’s reserved for the local shrimpers.  You can see Cosmo Place at the end of the dock, NOETA and a large yacht, “Forever”, plus a lot of smaller sailboats and fishing boats.  We’ll see Forever again, anchored at Chatterbox Falls.

We arrived at Egmont at 1 PM and decided to take advantage of lots of remaining daylight hours to walk Sechelt Rapids on Skookumchuck Inlet.   (“Skookumchuck” means rapid water).  During the big tide changes (spring tides) standing waves of 12 feet or more develop along with currents of up to 14 knots!  The hardy (crazy?) surfers and kayakers flock to these big waves to test their skill.  If you’re curious about the action of this water, do a search on YouTube for Sechelt Rapids

We were there in the afternoon on a flood tide…dramatic but not huge.  Quiet pools lined the shore and in these calm waters we saw striking purple starfish of all sizes.  There must be something special about the water here to grow these pretty ones.

The next morning Jerry and Jim went back to see the ebb tide at the rapids, which is always bigger.  Christie and I just weren’t up to another five-mile hike through the forest!  Jerry said the ebb tide was well worth the hike and, of course, he felt pretty good that he had walked the 5 miles again! 

During these ebbs, huge whirlpools appear…large enough to swallow whole boats.  There have been lots of drowning deaths here: most recently two rescue volunteers died when their RIB (rigid inflatable boat) overturned in the current.  Also on YouTube is a video of a tugboat capsizing as the barge it was towing pulled it under! 

Tuesday, June 4, we timed our departure with “low slack” so we could take the boats through Sechelt Rapids.  The rapids are a little side trip on our way to Princess Louisa Inlet, but we were curious to view the rapids from the boat on slack.  I must say, I was a little uneasy at the whole idea, but Jim and Jerry timed our transit perfectly.

It’s only 40 NM from Egmont to the public dock at Chatterbox Falls, at the head of Princess Louisa Inlet, but it’s some of the prettiest country we’ve seen in British Columbia.  In fact Erle Stanley Gardner said, There is no scenery in the world that can beat it. Not that I've seen the rest of the world. I don't need to, I've seen Princess Louisa Inlet.”

I’ll just bore you with a few more shots that I couldn’t resist.

In the photo above, NOETA is posing below a peak and waterfalls in Princess Royal Reach.

To travel to the inlet we cruised through three reaches:  Prince of Wales Reach, Princess Royal Reach, and Queens Reach.  (Why these three short, straight fjords are called reaches escapes me!)  Evidence of glacial activity was all around us…from the peaks thousands of feet overhead to the depth sounder reporting thousands of feet below our keel.

As we came around Patrick Point, between Princess Royal and Queens Reaches, we met a pod of 5 orcas.  Yay!!  It was great to have NOETA travelling with us so they could get this great shot of Cosmo Place.

We floated and watch these amazing sea mammals slowly swim down in reach, and we thought they were probably just out for a lovely afternoon cruise. 

We were somewhat prepared for the fantastic scenery since we had just read the book, “Adventuring to Princess Louisa Inlet”, by Betty Wright.  We had met Betty at Anacortes Lutheran Church a few months ago and sat and listened, slack-jawed, as she regaled us with her adventures.  She and her husband took an 18’ powerboat from Anacortes to Chatterbox Falls in 1957!  She’s in her 80’s now, and still telling her stories and showing her slides to anyone who is interested.  In fact, we saw her again at the Nordic Tug Rendezvous in Anacortes a couple of weeks later.

Entry into Princess Louisa Inlet includes transiting Malibu Rapids.  Yep, another tight squeeze through which water rushes four times a day.  The NOETA crew had been here before, so we let them take the lead as we crossed the rapids at high slack.  It’s a short, blind dogleg, so we made our “Securite, Securite” call, warning other boaters that we were coming through.  Complicating the passage is the point around which we travelled, home to Malibu Beach Camp.  This camp, run by Younglife (a non-sectarian Christian organization for teenagers) is on the point in the middle of the rapids.  In the photo above, NOETA is passing in front of the swimming pool, where about 50 kids were swimming and waving to us as we passed.  It was an unusual boating moment:  watching the chart plotter to dodge the rocks and shallows as these campers were diving and rowing, and skiing and sailing around us! 

Later in the day, we took the dinghies back down the inlet for a tour of the camp.  The history of the facility is interesting.  From Wikipedia:  Thomas F. Hamilton began construction of the Malibu Club in 1940, named after his yacht, the MV Malibu. This was the first of a planned series of resorts throughout Princess Louisa Inlet. The club opened in July 1941, but its operations were suspended until the end of World War II in 1945.  From that point until 1950, the facility was open as a premium resort. Visitors included John Wayne, Senator John F. Kennedy, Barbara Stanwyck, Bing Crosby, and Bob Hope. The club faced financial problems due to the limited transportation access and the limited two-month window of good weather. In 1948, a polio death and related quarantine further damaged business prospects. Hamilton's Malibu Club was closed in 1950.

Young Life, a Christian association, agreed to purchase the facilities from Hamilton in December 1953 and has operated the Malibu Club facility since. Hamilton had put a $1,000,000 price tag on the property, but sold it to Jim Rayburn, the founder of Young Life, for $300,000 after visiting other Young Life camps in the area.

It’s about 4 NM from Malibu Rapids to Chatterbox Falls, down another lovely fjord.  The screen shot of the chart plotter above shows our location moored at the public dock.  Since we were there early in the season we had few neighbors.  We’ve heard that at the peak of the season both the dock and the inlet are full of boats.  Anchoring here would be exciting…in 400+ feet of water!

Chatterbox Falls begin high up on the cliff in the left of the photo and are really a collection of lots of little falls from above.  Since the snow was still melting on the peaks around us, we saw many falls and cascades, as the water tumbled down to the inlet.  As you can imagine, the noise of the falls was dramatic, and the name “Chatterbox” for the falls was very apt.

We visited with a couple from Victoria who was moored at the dock.  They were from Victoria and spend a couple of months here in the spring before all the crowds arrived.  Imagine what that would be like:  no electricity, no available water (and no watermaker on the boat!), no nearby grocery stores, and no crowds!  You can see from the photo of their boat they’ve used every square inch of deck space for storage.  The white canvas on top of the house is set to catch rainwater.  They fish and crab and prawn in the inlet and have brought freeze-dried supplies.  This wouldn’t work for us, but they love their life here and enjoy the solitude.

Although there aren’t many hiking trails, we did walk out onto the beach below the falls at low tide and closer to the falls.  Along the trail there is a pavilion erected to the memory of Jim MacDonald.  He purchased the area in 1919 and lived there for many years, finally donating it to the Princess Louisa International Society in 1963.  BC Parks has owned it since 1964. 

It was a wet, humid walk and we definitely needed our rain gear.  Along the way we passed this huge fallen tree, with a good sized tree growing out of the trunk.  We’ve seen lots of these as we’ve explored the rain forests in British Columbia and SE Alaska. 

Again, I have to bore you with more photos.  This was an amazing spot and I took lots and lots of shots.  Next time we’re together, we’ll be able to bore you even more!

We’re standing on the little rocky beach in front of the falls.  Of course, we could only do this during low tide!  At high tide all of this disappears underwater.

Cosmo Place and I are on the public dock at Chatterbox Falls.  I was out for a photo shoot the first morning we were there and Jim Caldwell took my picture with Cosmo Place.  You can see the sun has just touched the tops of the fjord behind us.  It would be another hour before we had sun on the boat.

As we came in to the inlet, we did see a family of sea otters floating on the surface.  As soon as I had my camera in my hand, they had disappeared, of course!  We watched a family of mergansers swimming, fishing and exploring the tidelands.  I suspect this couple had a nest somewhere close by. Along the beach and along the trail we saw blooming wild roses, Alberta’s provincial flower.

Low slack through Malibu Rapids was at 1145 on Thursday, June 6, so we had a leisurely departure as we began our return journey to La Conner.  The weather was beautiful and we were soon in our shirtsleeves.  The view through the front windows of the pilothouse was amazing!

Because we had left rather late, we thought we would anchor or moor somewhere just short of crossing the Strait of Georgia, and had our eyes on Buccaneer Bay.  The afternoon weather report told us that Friday in the strait would be choppy and windy, so we chose to keep cruising.  Such a good plan!  We had a flat crossing and went back to good ol’ Silva Bay.  We moored at the dock at 1940, having traveled 76 NM.  That’s a long run for us!

Since we’d just been in Silva Bay, we were familiar with the slip assignment they gave us and knew that our moorage would be a skinny little slip.  Thankfully we had lots of hands to grab our lines and ensure a safe “landing”.  The boat across the finger from us was full of partyers and we were a little concerned about a raucous night next door!

We soon learned that Silva Bay was holding their annual fishing derby and these folks were among the participants.  They must have seen the looks on our faces because they quickly offered us a bowl of seafood chowder…freshly caught and freshly made.   I couldn’t resist a picture of my bowl!  Of course, poor Jer had to pass, since he’s allergic to shellfish and this soup was full of shrimp and clams and oysters and….yum!!!

Friday morning we left Silva Bay at 1000, anticipating slack water in Gabriola Passage.  It was a gusty, windy day all the way down Trincomalie Channel.  Our crossing of Haro Strait into the US was one of our rougher ones.  The wind was gusting to 30 knots on our bow so we saw plent of white caps as we bounced along.  Once again, we were able to clear customs over the phone as we entered US waters…sure beats stopping at the customs dock!

We really like Friday Harbor, and have stopped here many times.  Tonight’s moorage put us closer to the ferry terminal and their comings and goings were quite entertaining.  In the photo you can see one WA state ferry pulling in as the other is departing. 

Ten o’clock Saturday morning we were headed to La Conner.  The tides in the marina are huge right now, so we tried to time our passage to coincide with slack water in Swinomish Channel.  Our estimates weren’t too accurate, however, since we cruised down San Juan Channel on an amazing ebb and were doing 10 knots at 1250 RPM!  Consequently, we decided to stop in Anacortes, Cap Sante Marina, to get some groceries.  This accommodating marina will assign us a slip for a couple of hours, without charge, so we can walk to Safeway…just across the street.  We’ve become pretty adept at buying a lot of groceries without a car to transport them.  We take our portable handcart and load it up. 

As we passed March Point and refineries there, we saw these two big tankers parked at the dock…unusual to see two offloading at the same time.  The ship on the right is “British Beech” and I looked up her “vital statistics on the internet:

·    Ship Type: Crude oil tanker

·    Year Built: 2003

·    Length x Breadth: 240 m X 42 m

·    Gross Tonnage: 58070 t

·    Deadweight: 106138 t

·    Speed recorded (Max / Average): 13.5 / 13 knots

The close-up on the right shows the crew escape pod.  That would be quite a ride to the water!

We arrived back in La Conner Saturday afternoon about 1530…perfect timing!  The current was negligible and the winds were calm.  We had cruised 328 miles and had seen new, beautiful waterways.  I think we would go back to Chatterbox Falls again!

It was good to be back in our home berth, but we’ll have a quick turn around.  Ardith and her brother, Jon, and sister-in-law, Norma, were due on Monday, June 10 for an overnight cruise.  We’ll tidy up the boat, wash it down, do some laundry, and get ready for our next adventure.  

A new beginning...

December 29, 2014

Anacortes, WA

My last blog entry was at the end of August, right after we returned to LaConner from our third summer cruise to Alaska.  If you will recall, we had quite a challenging summer and had become disillusioned with Cosmo Place.  We had had several scary mechanical failures both with the dinghy and with the big boat.

We quickly settled Cosmo Place in its berth in LaConner and drove to Illinois the first week of September to visit family and friends.  During our 7 weeks of travelling to, from, and in the Midwest, Jerry and I had lots of conversations concerning our feelings about our Nordic Tug.  We weren’t sure we wanted to go to Alaska again and didn’t think taking the tug south to Mexico was in the cards for us.  The bottom line was we had lost confidence in the boat and didn’t want to face those challenges again.  What to do with the rest of our retirement lives? 

On our way east we had a bit of an Epiphany as we crossed North Dakota on our way to Fargo to visit my cousin Sally and her husband Jerry.  We “discovered” Theodore Roosevelt National Park as we drove through that desolate country.  We didn’t even know this interesting park existed!  All of a sudden we realized that we still had lots of exploring to do…beyond the edges of the country!  Our disenchantment with the boat became a conversation about perhaps getting some sort of RV and seeing the backcountry of the US. 

Eventually our vague ideas about an RV became a serious quest and while we were visiting Joy in Portland in November we visited several RV sales yards.  What a great way to spend a rainy Sunday afternoon!  Joy is looking at the outside TV on a Tiffin Phaeton!

Just as we had done as we prepared to buy the Nordic Tug, we educated ourselves about RVs.  Originally we thought a fifth-wheel would be ideal for us, but that would necessitate a new pick-up…$$$!  Eventually we learned about Tiffin motor coaches, made in Red Bay, Alabama.  Soon we were surfing the Internet looking for a late-model Tiffin motor home on the west coast.

Add caption

We found the motor coach we wanted in Portland…a 2014 37’ Allegro Bus, a diesel pusher, with only about 4500 miles on it.  After making our arrangements for financing and insurance, we were at the RV dealer on 11/21/14, ready to be trained and sign all of the papers.  Two interesting things about that day. 

*     It was on 11/21/2008 that Jerry’s GIST (gastrointestinal stromal tumor) made itself known in a geyser of blood.  Six years later we’re loving retirement and buying a bus!  

*     We learned that anyone can legally drive a motor home.  No special license or training is required!  Just nerves of steel and a lot of self-confidence.  It seemed daunting to us since the bus was 37’ and we were towing our Chevy pickup.  It felt as if we were two blocks long!

At four-fifteen, on the south side of Portland, in the rain, in rush-hour traffic we pulled out of the sales lot to bring our new motor coach north.  We had stop and go traffic for the first 2 hours, or 30 miles, but that was a good thing!  In spite of all the training we had received, we did not know how to operate the windshield wipers or the navigation system.  We made it to a rest stop about 40 miles north of Vancouver, WA, on I-5, and spent the night listening to the tractor-trailer compressors!  The next day we rolled in to LaConner and 2 days later parked the bus at the Fidalgo Bay RV Park, just outside of Anacortes.

Two hours after we got the bus settled, we were in the car, driving to California for Thanksgiving at our daughter and son-in-law’s home.  We thought we would return to the bus after Thanksgiving to begin the transition from boat to bus, get the boat emptied and sold, and learn all of the bus systems.  Instead, Jerry flew to Illinois from San Jose the Saturday after Thanksgiving because his dad, Jim, had narrowly avoided a heart attack and was awaiting coronary artery bypass surgery.  I drove back to Washington with Smokey, the cat, and moved out of Cosmo Place and onto the bus by myself.  My selfie was taken on the way to a Christmas party, without Jerry!  Really weird to spend 2 weeks without him.

Eventually Jim recovered from surgery (6 bypasses!) and returned home.  Soon Jerry was winging his way west and arrived at SeaTac on Tuesday, 12/16.  Jerry helped Jan do the final moving off Cosmo Place and we officially said good-bye to this part of our lives on 12/22,the Monday before Christmas.  

Jerry was practically skipping down the dock, so delighted to be done with the headaches and scares the boat had provided.  

I, on the other hand shed a few tears as I remembered the wonderful adventures we had enjoyed.  Because the motor home adventures were yet to be lived, sadness prevailed. 

So, faithful reader, we come to the end of this 5-year blog about our adventures on Cosmo Place.  However, I do think I’ll continue blogging and will write about our adventures in our Tiffin Allegro Bus…hmmmm, need a glitzy name for our new home!

Stay tuned…there are more adventures, challenges, learning, and laughter to come.

Jan

December 29, 2014

SE Alaska cruise August 12 - August 22

August 12 to August 22, 2014

Ketchikan to LaConner

After a weekend of raining sideways, Monday, August 11 was beautiful in Ketchikan.  We were able to get groceries and get the laundry done without wearing our foul weather gear…always a plus!  We had one last very pretty sunset in the Bar Harbor Marina on Monday evening and were mentally very ready to leave Alaska!

Tuesday, August 12 we headed to the fuel dock to top off the tanks for our cruise south through British Columbia.  By the time we left the fuel dock it was about 0830 and we weren’t sure where we would stop for the night.  Fortunately, the weather was fabulous and we decided to keep running until we got to Prince Rupert, crossing Dixon Entrance on a very calm sea.  Definitely made Captain Jerry happy!  This is a great shot of Jerry and unusual because he doesn’t usually let his whiskers grow!

We made it to Prince Rupert about 2010 (PDT) and called Canadian Customs on our way through Venn Passage.  Since we have Nexus cards, we don’t have the usual customs hassles.  We made the obligatory 10-minute stop at the lightering dock, and then off to our anchorage in Pillsbury Cove.  Usually when we arrive in Prince Rupert we moor at the yacht club, but their docks aren’t great and they are expensive.  Jill and Doug Princehouse had told us about this anchorage a couple of years ago and we thought we would give it a try.  It was great!  We had only 3 other boats around us, including this large yacht, with a nice view of the city behind her.

It was a different story when we left at 0845 August 13, Wednesday morning…fog!  We had less than 1/8-mile visibility when we left and ran with radar until about 1015 in Chatham Sound.  Little did we know what a problem fog would be on this southbound leg.  The radar and the boat’s navigations systems worked well, and we’re experienced travelling in the fog, but it was still creepy!  We both kept watch and listened for extraneous sounds coming through the fog.  The worst problems were the little fishing boats.  They showed up well on radar but tended to dart around in front of us and I don’t think they realized that we were not quite as maneuverable as they were.

We had both the wind and the current on our stern as we ran down Grenville Channel and made really good time.  We usually meet at least one cruise ship in this channel in August, but not this year.  We bypassed Lowe Inlet, a common anchorage, and instead dropped our anchor in Coughlin Passage, just around the corner from Wright Sound and the little Indian village of Hartley Bay.

This was another new anchorage for us and was delightful.  It was 1800 by the time we got the anchor set…an almost 10-hour day.  We were both tired and ready to be done.  We were lying in bed reading when we heard a new weird sound…a scraping on the anchor chain.  We were used to the sound the chain made when it scraped over rocks along the bottom but this was sharper than that noise.  With all the boat problems we’d had, we were rather paranoid about this new noise and were quickly up on deck to take a look.  Another first!  A small tree had gotten caught in the chain and had lodged against the hull.  It took a couple of attempts to get it pushed off and out of our way.  Ugh!  What next?

Thursday, August 14, we pulled the anchor a little before 0700 to have optimal currents through Jackson Passage, at the end of this day’s cruise.  Our transit of Wright Sound was one of the smoothest we had experienced and boded well for the day.  We took a good look at Butedale, the site of a former cannery.  It looked as though someone had been working on cleaning up some of the decrepit buildings.  Several of our boating friends have moored here overnight, but we weren’t brave enough to give it a try.

Our destination anchorage for this night was in Rescue Bay on the east side of Jackson Passage.  This passage was an easy cruise, except for about ½ mile toward the east end of the waterway where we had to negotiate a sharp dogleg to avoid the shallow rocky shoreline.  We had little or no current and no difficulties.  It would have been a little easier if someone had cut down that limb overhanging the waterway, though! 

Friday, August 15, we pulled anchor at 0700 for another day of cruising.  As we travelled through Seaforth Channel we passed this native canoe and support boat.  They were making amazingly good time.  This was the first native canoe we’d seen on the water this summer and had no idea where they were bound.  We by-passed Shearwater, a small town with a convenient marina, and made it all the way to Fury Cove, on the north side of Queen Charlotte Sound.  This is a common anchorage for boaters to use either going north or sound around Cape Caution.  As the name implies, this area can be challenging, since we would be exposed to the Pacific Ocean swells, currents, and waves.  We were the seventh boat to park there for the night.  The weather reports were good for crossing the sound the next morning and we were ready to get this next challenge out of our way.

Saturday, August 16, we were up at 0630 and pulled the anchor in a dense fog.  Again, the radar and navigation systems were indispensible and we cruised all the way around Cape Caution in the fog.  In fact, we ran with the radar on all day…a first.  So, I have no lovely scenery pictures of this portion of the trip to show you.  Our only challenge was a tug and tow that the radar picked up in the fog.  It seemed he was determined to bear down on us, even after we had turned our heading 90 degrees to starboard.  Of course, when we called he was rather defensive, but certainly not apologetic!  Of course we successfully avoided him, but never saw him in the dense fog.

We pulled in to Fife Sound about 1615 and finally broke out of the fog into bright sunshine!  Wonderful!  This night’s destination was Lady Boot Cove on the north side of Eden Island, yep, another new anchorage.  This was an area of the Broughton’s that we had not explored but was highly recommended in our travel guide. 

When we pulled into the cove’s entrance we found two boats already anchored there, and there was room only for those two.  We anchored in the narrow fairway entrance and we intrigued by these gulls perched on a branch overhanging the water.  The photo gives you an idea of how close the shoreline was to us…the same on both sides of the boat!

We had another good night on anchor here.  This was the first time we had anchored and awakened in the morning to find that the boat had not moved or swung with the tide…most unusual. 

Sunday, August 17, the alarm went off at 0615 and we noticed how dark it was.  We had been used to daylight by 0430 in Alaska!  Today’s cruising plan was to make the run down Johnstone Strait and into Sunderland Channel for an anchorage in Douglas Bay in Forward Harbor.  This was another favorite anchorage and would position us to make our way through the five sets of rapids on Monday.  However, we had great weather and calm seas and hated to stop early.  We looked at the currents through Whirlpool and Green Point Rapids, the first two in the series, and decided we had time to make slack.  This turned out to be a good decision for us.  The water on the north side of Whirlpool was actually more turbulent than the designated rapids area itself, but not dangerously so.  The boat was travelling through the water at 8.4 k and our speed over ground was 5.6.  We had a little current against us…got there a little ahead of slack!  Twelve miles further down the waterway we came to Green Point Rapids and had a similar experience.  The boat’s speed through the water was 7.8 but the speed over ground was 5.6.  We had come easily through both sets of rapids without waiting for absolute slack water.  Yay!  Once through we were able to relax a little and enjoy the beautiful scenery in Calm Channel.

Our anchorage on Sunday night was in Bickley Bay, yet another new spot to drop the hook.  We chose this anchorage because it was just around the corner from the last three sets of rapids, so we would be ready to conquer them the next morning.  We were settled by 1600 and had the rest of the sunny afternoon to sit outside and watch the wildlife.  At one point a solo dolphin came in to the bay, looking for his dinner.  He should have been successful…we saw lots of salmon jumping in the shallow water.  This Chinese junk-style sailing vessel anchored in the early evening.  Rather colorful!

Monday, August 18, was another glorious summer day and we enjoyed a leisurely departure, not wanting to arrive at the last sets of rapids too early.  We were in a regular parade of boats as we made our way to the rapids.  The other boaters had consulted their current tables, too and knew it was time to make the passage.  Seeing other boaters who’ve made the same timing decision as we had made was reassuring.  Although we haven’t had a bad experience in these rapids, we have heard lots of horror stories and certainly didn’t want to become an entry in the “Stupid Things Boaters Do” book!

We hailed a boat ahead of us and learned that he’d been through these rapids many, many times and was delighted to lead the way.  Our transit through these rapids was just as smooth as yesterdays but this time we had the current with us.  You can see the minimal turbulence in the photo.

Let me share my notes:

1055     Entering N Marker, Dent.  Speed thru water 6.0     Speed over ground 11.7

1113      Entering Gillard Rapids      Speed thru water  7.0     Speed over ground 11.8

1114      Green marker at Gillard     Speed thru water  6.9     Speed over ground 12.3   (wheeeeee!)

1121      Yaculta Rapids                    Speed thru water  6.2     Speed over ground 9.5

We were through the rapids and it wasn’t yet noon!  Wow!  Where to stay tonight?  We were on the edge of Desolation Sound, a popular cruising area for Canadian and NW US boaters.  We had spent a couple of weeks there last summer.  We didn’t want to repeat an anchorage, and chose to stay in Cortes Bay, a new spot for us!  We were settled in by 1430 and decided we deserved naps!  When we arose, sometime later, we glanced out the back door and there was “NOETA” and our friends Jim and Christie Caldwell anchored just behind us!  We had cruised to Princess Louisa Inlet with them during June, 2013.  NOETA (No ETA) is a 42’ Nordic Tug like ours and we seem to have lot in common. 

We soon caught up with Jim and Christie and spent two nights in Cortes Bay.  We shared all of our boat problems with them and learned that they had had a similar experience.  They have a fly bridge and the captain’s chair fell over with Jim in it!  Same problem!  The chair was mounted only with deck screws, rather than through bolts and a backing plate! 

Seattle Yacht Club has an out station at Cortes Bay.  Friends of the Caldwell’s were at the out station and we were invited for drinks one night.  My photo is from the deck of the yacht club.  Cosmo Place is in the middle of the picture in the distance…take my word for it!

We departed Cortes Bay on Wednesday, August 20, to continue on our way.  Once again the weather was glorious and we decided to cross the Strait of Georgia in the afternoon, rather than waiting until the next day.  That made for another long run…almost 9 hours…and much of it rather boring.  We were glad we made the effort, though, since crossing the strait was a smooth transit.  

We stayed in Silva Bay, our only moorage in Canada, rather than anchor in the bay.  This stop is a favorite one and we always enjoy dinner at the marina restaurant.  Silva Bay has had the unfortunate reputation of having a bay full of derelict boats, but it was looking better.  I took the photo of the bay as we departed.

Thursday, August 21, we knew we would be back in the USA.  We cruised through Boundary Passage and crossed into the US near Turn Point Light about 1210.  We’ve hiked out to this point several times when we have been anchored in one of Stuart Island’s bays. 

One thing we noticed during our cruising on this day was the huge amount of boats on the water.  We had been accustomed to the isolation of Alaska, and not seeing another boat all day long.  South of Silva Bay we felt like we were surrounded.  Let me show you some photos.

Actually we met this gorgeous sailboat just south of the rapids.  He hailed us, in a delightful British accent, asking about the currents we had just passed through.

This tug and tow were probably headed for Powell River and the pulp mill there.  The first barge was enclosed with a large access door in the middle.  Jerry thought that first barge might be carrying processed lumber.  The second barge was open and full of wood chips.

This small BC ferry was carrying passengers and vehicles between the many Gulf Islands.

We kept an eye on this large BC ferry as he came from our rear port quarter.  We definitely needed to stay out of his way!  You can see the sailboat in the foreground looks quite small in comparison

Sailboats were all over the place…and even under sail!  We kept a close eye on these guys, too.  It seemed just when we thought we had passed one, he decided to tack and come right back across our bow!  They were pretty to see but challenging to keep out of their way.  They have the right of way every time and some sailors seem to take advantage of this.

We made it all the way to Anacortes on Wednesday night and moored at Cap Sante Marina.  It was great to be back in the US!  We had phone and Internet service and even had our DirecTV back in operation!  

Thursday, August 22, we waited for the fog to lift to cruise down Swinomish Channel to the LaConner Marina.  Being welcomed home by these harbor seals was great!  We arrived back in our slip in LaConner about 1230.  We had been gone 123 days, travelled 3253 miles, and had put 444 hours on the engine.  We had learned a bunch, marveled at amazing scenery, and had some challenging experiences...and survived it all!

That brings me to the end of this year’s Alaska cruise.  So long until next time!