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!

Back to the land of cell and sun

I have not been able to post to my blog for a number of reasons.

The first -- no cell - no service!

The second - blogging app I liked to use is no longer useable - Blogpress - doesn't work!

I got another blogging app and it's ok but the photos are not as nice as I would like.

And I'm going to try using the desk top version of Chrome on my iPad. So this is mostly a test blog.

Last time I blogged I was still blogging about Gwaii Haanas.

Next post will be about our trip around Cape St. James.

SGang Gwaay

We had a wonderful experience in SGang Gwaay. 
We left Rose Harbour before 8 AM and when we got the the ancorage at the north side of Anthony Island there were no other boats there and the mooring ball was free.  So we tied up to the mooring ball and took the skiff to shore.

The Watchman that came to greet us was Ken - who we had met in Tanu.
We were the only people on the island and had a personal tour of the site with Ken. So far we have not had any other people with us when we have toured around the Watchmen sites.  We have been very lucky. Ken has amazing knowledge of the history and is a storyteller.
SGang Gwaay is a very special place.
I'm just going to post some photos for now.
























The potato patch - as we walk back to the skiff along a trail.










We are leaving Prince Rupert and out of cell service. So it will be a while before I post again.

South to Rose Inlet

We left the morning of June 29th to make the 40 mile run to Rose Inlet. The seas were quite a bit better but we had the poles down and the fish in the water. 

We had a good trip and were happy to be heading towards SGang Gwaay finally. 

Beautiful morning sky. 

We traveled through the Houston Stewart Channel - which has quite a strong tidal current - past Rose Harbour and went looking for a spot to anchor in Rose Inlet. It was very windy in Rose Inlet and there were a couple of sailboats in there. One anchored where we were hoping to go, behind a little island outcrop on the east side of the Inlet. We ended up anchoring in the same area but we were not too pleased with the wind and the current. So we pulled the anchor and moved to a small bight on the west side. We held well but the wind blew all night. We felt it was not a very interesting or pretty spot to anchor. Both sailboats left a couple of hours after we arrived. 

Interesting sailboat in Rose Inlet 

The next morning there were strong winds - SE 20-30 knots predicted so we left Rose Inlet in search of a better anchorage that we hoped would protect us from the SE winds. 

We took Phoenix Hunter out in the direction of Anthony Island to see what it would be like to access SGang Gwaay. Even with the poles and fish the swell and the wind and tide were more than what we wanted to be experiencing. 

There was a cross on the shore of Orion Point on our way to Balcom Inlet 

We decided to go into Balcom Inlet. A small Inlet that is on the north side of Kunghit Island. The Douglass book didn't have much to say about it - except it was subject to Willwaws from the south and unknown bottom. And violent Yawing as a result. 

Williwaws - our latest nautical term!!  

The first night in Balcom it was very windy and the water was bright with luminescence. I was not liking the constant blowing wind as much! But it was a very pretty spot and the holding was very good. Lots of mud and shells on the anchor. 

The next day ( Canada Day )the wind went down a bit. And we decided to go out for a little tour in the big boat. Jim tried to do a little fishing but there was still took much current and wind and tide to hold the boat in any sort of position.  

We went back to Balcom and took the skiff down and went for a little walk on the beach. Balcom has a lovely shore and a couple of creeks that have soft mossy banks and could be good bear territory. We saw deer on the shore though. No bear. 

The wind is starting to make us a little weary. 

The next day we went to Rose Harbour and anchored up for the night. It was windy and there was a very strong current. There is a mooring bouy there but we didn't take it. We should have. We took the skiff about the Harbour. 

Float planes bring tourists in and out of Rose Harbour and then they are taken to SGang Gwaay by zodiac.

Rose Harbour is an old Whaling station and there are three houses there - a couple of them operate as guest houses for visitors who want to see SGang Gwaay. We met the owner of the Rose Harbour Guest house. They offer meals - authentic Thai cuisine and take their guests by zodiac to SGang Gwaay. 

The next morning July 3rd we went to SGang Gwaay. 

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Anna Bay to Island Bay

June 26 - 28 2017

After leaving Anna Inlet in the morning we went to Shuttle Island to get water.
There is a dock at Shuttle Island in Hoya Passage. It was easy access and we quickly filled the water tanks. Although we had a lot of water still we figured it was a good idea to top up when we could.


We planned to head to Section Cove - it was a Cove at the top of Burnaby Isalnd and there was a mooring bouy and we could set ourselves up to go south around Burnaby Island - to Rose Harbour.

We saw the tour boat Swell - we've seen Swell quite a bit in the last few days.
As we were travelling south we saw another pleasure boat on AIS about an hour ahead of us. We thought they might be going into Section Island. As it turned out they were going the same area but to an anchorage -- Island Bay. As we got close to Section Island there was a boat already at the Mooring bouy - so in the end we motored further in to the Burnaby Narrows channel and caught the mooring bouy there that we had been at a few days earlier. We really enjoyed staying here a few days earlier but it added about 5 miles to the trip south.


High water again in Burnaby Narrows.

An old log cabin on the shore.
We enjoyed a calm and sunny evening and Jim put the poles down ready to put the fish in the water tomorrow if needed
We would need to be heading into Hecate Strait to go around Burnaby Island to go south to Rose Harbour.
In the morning we listened to the marine weather. It wasn't too windy in the morning but the weather report had the wind coming up in the afternoon to 20-30 from the NW - that should be ok - as we would be in the lee of the island for a NW wind.
But the Hecate Strait bouy was NW 21 gusting 27 with 2 metre seas - we thought that could be an issue. But it was so calm where we were in Burnaby Narrows and the Hecate Strait bouy was 56 miles away. So we decided we would head out - 0630 and if we didn't like what we saw we would turn around and come back.
The entire length of the Burnaby Inlet was flat calm. But as we got closer to the outer area and had a view of Hecate Strait we could see some breaking waves on the shore.
It didn't take us long to realize it was WAY too lumpy for us - 2 metres on the beam. And we turned around and came back to our nice calm mooring bouy.
We were thinking of going into Island Bay - an anchorage just before the Narrows but the boat there was anchored up in there and I didn't want to go barging in at the crack of dawn.
It was a little tricky to catch on to the mooring ball with the poles down. But we quickly settle back in and I was ready to make some cinnamon buns. I figured we needed a reward.
About half an hour later we saw the Pelagic leaving Island Bay and heading out the exact same way we just had been. So we decide to go into Island Bay - and we quickly cleared of the moody bouy and made our way into their spot. They left about 8:30 am.
Island Bay is a lovely spot. A nice grassy meadow at the head of the bay. Good bear territory. There were some campers and hikers in there as well. No bears.


We have been seeing a lot of slides in and around the park and we are wondering if they could have be the result of the earthquake in 2014.  They all look pretty recent an like they are all the same age.

About 11:30 AM a boat came and anchored up at the other end of the bay. I thought it might be Palegic - a North Pacific Trawler - thinking they would not be any happier out there than we were.
In the afternoon - after some cinnamon buns we took down the skiff and went for a little ride about. We were thinking we might go to shore when the tide came up a bit.
We motored over to the boat and sure enough it was - Pelagic - they didn't like it either. Although they went a little further. Thought it might be a bit better if they were a little further away from shore. I guess that it wasn't!
So we spent the night in Island Bay. We were going to go for a little walk on shore but the wind really came up in the afternoon. We saw some campers on shore.


I am having trouble with the BlogPress app that I was using to post to my blog. I am hoping it will start working properly again. This is a new app and it seems the photos are not as good of a quality.  Technology!!