Cape St. James

Cape St. James

After a very successful trip to SGang Gwaii we went back to Balcom Inlet for the night. The winds were light and the seas were flat calm. The next morning we were planning to head north but it was such a lovely calm day. I suggested - why don't we go south - around Cape St James and spend another day around the south end of the park - go into Luscoone Inlet for the night.
The South Hecate bouy was only 4 knots of wind and the seas were less than one meter. When we left Balcom Inlet it was pretty much glassy in South Hecate Strait. The Cape St James light station was reporting winds of 6 knots. Sounded good.
We did have the poles out and the fish in the water for the trip.




Flat calm!
We idled south along the east side of Kunghit Island going in and out of some of the big bays there. The tour boat Swell was travelling along as well.





One of the bays. I can't remember which Bay this is.




A cave on the shore in one of the three big bays on Kunghit Island.


Woodruff Bay was the last Bay before Cape St. James.

We were watching where "Swell" was going - apparently this was as far south as they went!  Jim thought they would go around the Cape - I was not so sure.





This is the chart on the computer as we are heading south - Jim has it orientated so it is displayed to the direction the boat is travelling - instead of north to south. So south is at the top of the screen as we head along our route.

Cape St. James is the very bottom of Gwaii Haanas. At one boater called it -- the Mount Everest of pleasure boating.



We could see some big waves crashing on the shore between the islands, on the west side of the islands.  But it is very hard to tell from a distance what it will be like exactly - until you are in the middle of it.


The winds were calm and we were coming up to high water slack.

Hundreds of Sea Lions lying on the rocks - boy did they smell!



Jim decided to go a little further south and go around the southern most island, instead of between the islands as you see on the chart.  The waves were just crashing on the shore!  He figured it was the safer option.

Coming out the other side!

Unfortunately a photo will never really give the full picture of waves!  We were met by these "houses" as Jim liked to call them!!  Huge waves!!  Phoenix Hunter seemed to enjoy the trip thoroughly - Jim and I held on and went for the ride - no turning back - by the time we were in the thick of it that was not an option! I wasn't able to take a lot of photos while we were in the big waves - I was holding on tight!  

We came up the west side of Kunghit Island - traveled up the east side of Anthony Island and spent the night at an  anchorage in  Luscoone Inlet.  It was a lovely - settled - out of the wind and waves little spot tucked up between some small islands on the east shore of Luscoone.  It turned out to be one of our favourite anchorages in that area.  

Luscoone Inlet

We are home now.  I have been having a terrible time with trying to post to my blog since July.  I've had a bunch of different problems - from a failure of my blogging app, not able to use the blogger dashboard from Google Chrome on my Ipad, lack of cell service and poor dock wifi - etc!  

I started this post multiple times to have it fail to upload and then get deleted and then partially not saved and finally I decided to just wait until I got home.   I will try to get the rest of the trip up on the blog during the next few months.  We have a number of things we are doing this fall so I will not be able to do it as often as I would like.  

I will work on it because Jim and I use the blog as a diary for ourselves more than anything else.  It is nice to look back at where we were and what we did in the years after our trips.  

We had an amazing summer.  We left home on May 17th and returned home on August 30th.

We put a total of 2200 nautical miles on the boat.  Jim said that would be like getting in the car and driving from Vancouver to Timmins Ontario.  

It is nice to be home.  Jenny and Lilly were well taken care of by an amazing house/pet sitter!

Lilly is still a pita!