The alarm sounded at 4 am. Early I know. But today we want to get to the next sound along the inside passage to Alaska. That sound would be Fitz Hugh Sound. It is the beginning of our next leg of the watery highway to Alaska.
The anchor came up and we moved
out of Blunden Harbour at 4:30 am. Blunden
Harbour is popular stopping spot for boaters up this way. In the late 1800’s and early 1900’s the
harbour housed a fairly large first nation village. Lots of native cedar lodges that once dotted
the shoreline are now long gone. All
that remains of the native village are few big cedar poles laying out over the
massive midden beach. These large downed
logs used to be part of a massive long house.
The light of day was just bright
enough to make out the rock hazards, as we snaked our way out of the Harbour
and into Queen Charlette Strait. I left
early for two reasons. The first reason
was to catch the tidal current that would be going our way. The second was to get into Fitz Hugh Sound
before the afternoon north westerlies blow down from Queen Charlotte Sound.
The passage to Fitz Hugh Sound
would take us out into the Pacific Ocean.
For 25 miles or more we would be in unprotected waters, and subject to
the ocean waves. Those swells from the
ocean, that started way out at sea make landfall along the rocky coast of the
BC mainland.
As passed the end of Vancouver
Island I had an unobstructed view of Japan to the west. Well that is, if the earth was flat. In
reality I could only see 15 miles or so.
The ocean was glassy. The swells are
all that moved the water this morning.
And those waves were only a meter high or less. We rocked back and forth gently as we motored
toward Fitz Hugh Sound.
We pass Cape Caution at 8:45
am. Cape Caution is a point that juts
out the furthest into the Pacific Ocean along this stretch of BC
coastline. There is a shoal that runs out
from the point. With the shallow depths
of 3o to 60 feet made us steer out more into the Pacific Ocean. Normally the waves of the Pacific Ocean are
pounding the beach, in front of Cape Caution, causing all kinds of sea foam to
be produced. But today the wave gently
rolled up the rocks on the point, and then slowly receded back into the ocean.
We saw numerous Sea Otters off the
Cape Caution shoal. They were swimming
along on their backs. The shallow depths
here must make it easy for them dive and forage of food along the bottom
here. We never got close enough to
photograph one. They always dove long
before they got into a decent photographic distance.
After passing Cape Caution, we
changed our course. Our new course took
us to southern tip of Cavert Island, and the entrance into Fitz Hugh
Sound. We didn’t immediately go into the
sound. Instead we stopped at Grief Bay,
on the sound end of Calvert Island.
Grief Bay is exposed to the
Pacific Ocean and has a nice sandy beach, with lots of driftwood. I had stopped here in 2015, when on my cruise
to Haida Gwaii. At that time there was a
lot of tsunami debris on the beach. I
was hoping this year we might find something cool stuff that had floated in
during the winter. But that was not the
case.
Heather and I spent about an hour and
a half exploring the beach. We only
found a few shells, but we did see a number of animal tracks on the beach. We assumed there were from the sea otter’s tracks
we saw them swimming around the kelp infested cove.
The sea otters where very
shy. As we approach in the big boat or
dinghy they would dive under long before we got even close enough to take a
picture, with my telephoto lens. Maybe
they the great otter massacre that occurred in the late 1800’s has now been
implanted in their DNA to stay away from man.
After getting back to the boat I
decided to drop my fishing line to the bottom to see if I could catch
dinner. I did hook two flounders. I threw them both back. After pulling up the anchor we headed for
Fury Cove, which was a little less than 7 miles away. Fury Cove is a BC marine park. The wind was going our way, so we sailed. We sailed at 3.5 to 4 knots almost all the
way there.
Inside of Fury Cove we found 4
other boats already anchored. One of
them, a big power boat named “Megabyte”.
They were cleaning a salmon off their swim step. We anchored right next to them in 45 feet of
water. When the motor stopped it was 4:25
pm.
This afternoon it was fairly nice,
with broken clouds and blue sky. A good
solar panel day. But just before we
anchored in Fury Bay Heather said “I think the weather is turning. It looks
like rain is coming back”. I sure hope
it doesn’t start raining.
Once anchored Heather was down
cooking dinner. I put the crab pot down,
and relaxed while dinner cooked. Chicken
pasta dinner. Very good.
With dinner done, it was time to
go ashore. From the boat the beaches look
like a tropical paradise, with white sandy beaches and lush green vegetation
along the shoreline. But I knew the
beach was a midden beach instead of sand from ground up coral. And the vegetation wasn’t palm trees, but
different species of evergreen trees.
As we headed toward the beach it
started raining. That didn’t put a
damper on our exploring. We toured
along the shoreline, which is a marine park.
There is a cabin on the beach used by kayakers. But today the site is closed. There were a couple of signs posted “Park
Close due to COVID-19”.
Once our exploration was complete,
it was back to the boat. It was only 7
pm. I jotted down the miles traveled,
and sailed today and then climbed in bed. Didn’t take me long to go to sleep.
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