July 25 Marathon trip to Shearwater/Bella Bella

We started out at 7 AM to make the comfortable passage from Hartley Bay to Kutze Inlet...just 4 hours south.

Arrived at Kutze by 11 AM and the water had been so calm that we decided to venture further to the native "village" of Klemtu...only another 2 hours south.

By 1:30 we were approaching Klemtu and heard on the radio that the state ferry AND a barge were due in there. The cruising books warn that their docks are not real accessible and subject to lots of wakes when they have ferry traffic...soooo you guessed it...we decided to go on to Salmon Bay...just another 2 hours.

By 4 PM we had been underway for 9 hours and longed for a place to rest our weary bodies. Salmon Bay was a stop we had made with the fish camp group and we remembered it as being very comfortble and how we had watched a bear play on the beach. Well...by the time we got there the northwesterly winds which had been predicted to pick up, had. The bay lines up exactly the way of the strong winds and there was not enough shelter to make a good anchorage under the conditions. Well our next stop on planned itinerary and (thank God) already plotted on our chartplotter was Shearwater....just another 3 hours away!

Yikes...will this day ever end ???

The route to Sheawater was not a protected one and we had no business being out there in near gale force winds but that's where we ended up.

There was a shortcut but without having better knowledge of the waters we could not risk it...we entered the exposed portion taking the waves at a 45 degree angle. They were 3 feet and building.

As we rounded Ivory Island (Gary swore he could see Japan from there) we had 10 foot following seas...not good! The best we could do was surf on them riding up the backs and exceeding speeds of 13 knots until the waves outran us and dropped us back down. With Gary at the helm it (the wheel) was spinning like a top trying to keep us from taking any "abeam". The wierdest part was we had the sun at our back and it would shine brilliantly in the back cockpit windows until we slid down into the trough of the wave and we had the shadow of the wave behind us.

Finally we entered calmer waters. I peeled Gary's hands off the wooden wheel and his tension eased a bit as we went past Bella Bella to the "resort" at Shearwater. Yowie...look at all those boats...they were already "rafted" to each other along the dock and everyone pretended we did not exist for fear that we would ask to add to their rafting.

It was after 8 PM, we had been underway for 13 grueling hours and no one would even answer the VHF radio channels. Gary said "OK how far to Ocean Falls ???" I was going to cry, I was so tired and there was NO WAY we could go any further...besides even Mother Nature was gettig ready to douse the lights. No anchorage spots around. One trawler was anchored in kind of mid-channel but that is not our "thing". We were desperate. About then another power boat cruised in, around and tied up to the fuel dock. You all know Gary is such a "law abiding" person than no way did he want to moor to a dock with big signs that said "NO MOORAGE" but as I already said...we were desperate. I reasoned with him, "We are going to buy fuel when they open the fuel dock at 7 AM...we're just a little early...you like to be early don't you ?" Well we were so early and so tired that at 3 AM when the fuel barge came in to deliver fuel to the fuel dock we did not even wake up as he tied his gigant!
ic vessel up right in front of us! He finally "disturbed us" as he departed.

We woke at 6:45 AM just in time to literally jump into our clothes and be ready when the fuel dock attendent arrived at 7.

Not wanting to do a rerun of yesterday's marathon, we made a glorious passage (this morning July 26th) to Ocean Falls. and once I rest my mind and body a bit I will report on our days of R & R here.

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