Our stay in Port Hardy was pleasant, but brief.
We stayed at the Quarterdeck Marina, where I have stayed several times before.
It is a very nice facility, with all the services we needed, and it was close enough to some stores that we could take our rolling cart with us to the grocery store and get a load of provisions.
We also fueled up here before pulling over to the guest float.
If you want to read more about the Quarterdeck Marina, here is a good link to their website:
http://quarterdeckresort.net/marina/
Karen stands by Faraway at our mooring at the guest float at Quarterdeck Marina.
We had some "visitors" along the float, but at least they didn't come aboard and steal our food.
This is the "Lighthouse Express," the 25' C-Dory run by our new friends Heinz and Mark.
They followed along behind us on the crossing from Dawsons Landing, and were once again tied up behind us here on the guest float.
We had lunch with them here, and they came with us to the grocery store.
But in the morning our paths diverged as they had other plans.
It's nice to meet new people with similar boating interests along the way.
Perhaps our paths will cross again some day.
Our general plan from here was to try to make up some of the time we lost while waiting at Dawsons Landing. That meant some short nights, long days, and lots of running time.
Under "normal" conditions I would run from Port Hardy, shown on the left, over to Port Harvey, near the red arrow on the right. That's about a 50 mile run - a good day on the water. But since we were trying to make up time, and I had learned that the Port Harvey marina was not open yet, we decided to skip the Port Harvey stop and go all the way to Blind Channel Resort & Marina.
I did not have a route plotted all the way from Port Hardy to Blind Channel so I used two routes for today's trip. When we got near the entrance to Port Harvey (the red star) we switched over to the above route that shows Port Harvey to Blind Channel. It is roughly another 35 miles to go all the way on to Blind Channel. That's an 85 mile day, which is a long one for us.
Having the autopilot helped a lot on the trip, and we used it most of the time.
Even though it was not integrated into the Garmin GPS navigational unit it was very easy to see the plotted route on the Garmin and then just adjust the compass heading on the autopilot as needed to stay on the route.
We left Port Hardy at about 5:30 AM, saying goodbye to Heinz and Mark as they left at about the same time.
The run down Queen Charlotte Strait was very calm.
So calm in fact, we saw these kayakers, out in the middle of nowhere, miles from anywhere.
Hardy souls I'm sure.
Along this area there are several areas where tide rips are prevalent.
Because Faraway is a semi-displacement hull she is greatly affected by tides and currents.
My Coastal Explorer software and my Garmin GPS navigational unit both show very detailed information about tides and currents. But on a run like this, we take them as they come, and sometimes they are favorable and sometimes they are decidedly unfavorable.
Today the current Gods were favorable, and we got a strong push in several places along our route.
We arrived at the Blind Channel Resort at about 3:30 PM.
We took on fuel, yes, once again, more fuel, and then tied up at the assigned slip.
I have stayed here a few times in the past.
In May 2016 Lisa and I stayed 3 nights here, and we walked the trail system that they have nearby.
Here are some photos from our brief stay at Blind Channel Resort.
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| Karen at our mooring at Blind Channel |
The floats were relatively empty here, due primarily to the fact that it was very early in the cruising season.
This is the store and post office at Blind Channel.
I think they rent out these cabins to guests over the cruising season.
A view of the floats from along their trail system.
This is the sign that warns hikers on their trail system about bears, wolves, and cougars.
Yikes!
We saw one goose on the lawns that was missing one webbed foot.
He (she) apparently learned how to swim without going in circles, but navigating around on land was difficult.
A very unique wall on the side of the store.
It appears to be made of concrete, with wine and other bottles embedded in the concrete such that only a small portion of the neck and the opening protrudes from the concrete.
Looks like a lot of work to me.
The resident marina dog monitors traffic up and down the ramp.
One of the previous owners was very creative and made numerous collages (for lack of a better term) like this one. They are placed all around the marina. Each one is very unique and contains shells, glass, and all kinds of miscellaneous parts and pieces.
They have a restaurant here, and in previous visits Lisa and I have always preferred to eat on the boat. We had heard that it was very up scale and pricey, so we avoided it.
But Karen insisted that she wanted to treat me to dinner up there, so up we went.
What Lisa and I had heard was definitely true.
There were only 4 choices on the menu, and all were in the $40 to $50 range.
Karen ordered the halibut, and while it was very tasty, it was a tiny piece, for $44.
But the ambience made up for it, I guess.
This was another short night for us as we intended to make many miles the next day.
We had another long day ahead of us, intending to make about 81 miles from Blind Channel to a place called Pender Harbour, which is in Malaspina Strait, which connects to the Strait of Georgia.
Blind Channel is up there on the left hand corner, circled in red, and Pender Harbour is down in the lower right corner, also circled in red.
In order to make it down there we had to transit Seymour Narrows, which are marked with a red left facing arrow.
Seymour Narrows must be transited at or near slack tide due to extreme currents, sometimes approaching 14 knots. The strength of the currents in Seymour Narrows changes with the tide cycles and sometimes can be much lower, it just depends. I have a book that tells when slack tide will be in all the critical passes and narrows.
It is about 21 miles from Blind Channel to the entrance to Seymour Narrows, so we timed our departure so that we would arrive just before slack tide. The currents for this day were not that severe, but we wanted to be close to slack tide anyway.
We arrived at the entrance to Seymour Narrows about an hour before slack tide.
So we just drifted around for awhile, and Karen took advantage of the waiting time by taking a quick shower.
By the time she was done we noticed that several boats had already been going through the Narrows, so we decided to go through as well.
Sea conditions were very calm today, so we had no issues going through the Narrows, or heading down towards Malaspina Strait.
Along the way we passed this fuel barge.
I don't really know how much fuel these barges can carry but I would guess that it is measured in the hundreds of thousands of gallons.
About 5 PM we arrived into Pender Harbour.
Pender Harbour is a large area, with 3 separate "bays" within it.
There are several marinas, and numerous private residences with private docks and mooring buoys in the area.
I had been in here before, and we were headed to a marina called John Henry's Marina.
Of course we needed fuel, again, and so we fueled up and then went to our spot on the guest float.
Not many boats here either, which makes it nicer for us.
Here are some photos from our brief stay at John Henry's Marina:
There was a small store nearby, with a connected café.
Karen and I had dinner there.
More food, less cost, a win-win all around.
And, they had a place to dump all our recyclables, which Karen had been meticulously collecting and separating for the whole trip.
I met and talked with a recently retired couple who had a sail boat tied up near us.
They were just learning the boat and this was their first voyage on her.
The man told me the fitting on his water heater had blown out and he was trying to deal with that.
As it happens I had had trouble with the fittings on my water heater and had bought two - 1/2" brass fittings when I only needed one.
Turned out the extra fitting I had was exactly the one he needed, so I just gave it to him.
The route for May 21st was in 3 segments:
Pender Harbour to Active Pass
Active Pass to Otter Bay
Otter Bay to Friday Harbor
This is the first leg, from Pender Harbour to Active Pass.
It's about 58 miles.
Active Pass is one of those places where the guide books recommend that you transit at slack tide, so we had timed our departure and our speed to try to do just that.
But while we were underway I studied the current tables more closely and saw that there was very little current in Active Pass this day so we were able to go through there much earlier than we thought we could.
On the way down the Strait of Georgia we just crossed the corner of an area called Whisky Gulf.
WG is an area jointly managed by the USA and Canadian military for the testing of torpedoes and other similar ordinance.
I called them several times on the radio as we approached the area, and received no response, so it appeared they were not active on this day.
This is a detailed chart of Active Pass itself.
I must say that the pass is aptly named, because it is indeed very active.
You can see that it is "S" shaped, which means that you when you enter from either side, you cannot see what other vessels may be entering from the other side.
Larger vessels, such as ferries, always announce their presence and their intentions on the radio, but they are fast and there is very little sea room in there to maneuver if you get caught into a tight spot.
We had AIS (Automatic Identification System) on the Garmin GPS, so I could see the larger vessels, but it was still a bit dicey making our way through there.
Those huge Canadian ferries don't slow down and they come barreling through there at what seems just the worst time.
But we made it through OK.
It was so sunny and hot on our way down the Strait of Georgia that Karen improvised a sun shade of sorts. By using the existing strut for the flybridge canvas, one additional cord, a bath towel and some clips, she made it much more comfortable for us as we piloted the boat.
We had thought that we might stay the night at a place called Otter Bay Resort, which is just a few miles on the other side of Active Pass, which is why I plotted a route from Active Pass to Otter Bay,
Here is the route that shows the entrance to Active Pass, the transit through the pass, and then a few more miles to Otter Bay. Total distance is about 8 miles.
When we got to Otter Bay it was still pretty early and we made the decision to forge ahead and make it to Friday Harbor, in the San Juan Islands.
I had called the Customs guy there earlier and we knew that they were on duty until 8 PM.
So we figured if we could get there by 7 PM, then they would have time to clear us back into the US before the end of their shift.
Here is the route from Otter Bay down to Friday Harbor.
It is about 22 miles.
We crossed into US waters at about 4:30 PM and arrived into Friday Harbor at about 6:30 PM.
The protocol there is that you pull into the Customs dock, and get tied up.
Then only the captain is allowed to leave the boat.
There is a booth there, and sometimes there is a Customs agent at the booth, but this time there was not.
So there is a dedicated phone there, and you call them and give them all the information.
I have always said that the CBP (Customs Border Patrol) agents have no personality and definitely no sense of humor. That has been my experience with them in the past.
But this time when the agent asked me Karen's occupation and I responded with "Active Duty Military," he became our best friend.
Turned out he was ex-Army and had worked in the same field that Karen is in.
He did have to come down to the boat and personally check our papers though.
He and Karen "talked Army" for awhile while I baked in the hot sun.
He confiscated a couple of juicy and beautiful oranges that Karen had bought in Port Hardy, because I guess you are not allowed to bring citrus fruits into the US from Canada.
Despite his friendliness Karen was not happy about losing those wonderful oranges.
We got tied up into our slip on the guest floats and were home for the night.
Here are a few pictures we took that evening from around the harbor area.
I sure love those Ranger Tugs!
The Washington State ferries run in and out of Friday Harbor continuously, it seems.
Karen stands by the sculpture of Popeye the seal.
On the way into Friday Harbor we had something that resembled a "dinner" while underway, something we did not normally do. We decided to have something quick and easy since we were rapidly approaching Friday Harbor.
Karen heated up some hot dogs in the microwave.
The microwave is a 120 VAC device which means it is plugged into a standard household like outlet.
This is powered by our inverter, which runs off the batteries.
I'm pretty sure that this was the first time that we had run the microwave while it was on the inverter, with the autopilot on at the same time.
Just about the time she hit the button the microwave, the autopilot failed.
One component of the autopilot system is a heading sensor, essentially an electronic compass.
It is a separate unit mounted up in the engine spaces.
Once we got to Friday Harbor I went up in there and checked it, and sure enough it was showing a red blinking status light, which even without reading the manual, led me to believe it was in some kind of distress.
I reset it a couple of times and it came back alive.
Lesson to be learned though - do not use the microwave on the inverter while the autopilot is on.
I will need to get an electrician to track down this problem and remedy it.
The plan for Tuesday May 22nd was to depart Friday Harbor early and time our arrival at Deception Pass for slack tide there. Deception Pass is one of those places where most of the time you really need to transit at slack tide. I went through there in late August 2015 and even though it was slack tide it was a wild ride.
Here is the route from Friday Harbor to Deception Pass.
It is about 20 miles.
Once you are through Deception Pass you are on the inside of Whidbey Island, which offers protection from the relatively open water of the Strait of Juan De Fuca.
After Deception Pass we intended to make our last stop before Gig Harbor at Shilshole Bay Marina.
It's about 53 miles.
We departed Friday Harbor right on schedule at 7 AM in clear skies and calm seas.
We were barely a few miles out when we encountered dense, very dense, fog.
I have radar and AIS and so we can travel in fog, but most of my experience in the fog has been in very remote waters, with few or no other vessels in the area.
On this route we had just the opposite.
There were pleasure craft in abundance as well as tugs, ferries, and other commercial vessels all around us.
I think at some points visibility was less than 50 yards.
Karen and I both had our eyes glued to the Garmin GPS unit.
We tracked and avoided numerous vessels, but it was very tense.
At one point we could see on the radar a vessel (size unknown at first) approaching from our port side. We kept tracking it and adjusted our course to try to avoid it, but it kept coming, and getting closer and closer. Finally I had Karen blow our air horn several times.
We knew it was coming from our port side so we were straining our eyes on that side to try to find it.
Then, right out of the fog, barely a few yards away, there was a sailboat, about 36' in length.
He made a quick swerve to his starboard at the same time that I made a quick turn to our starboard, and we passed just a few yards apart.
That was most definitely the closest I have come to a collision with another boat (while underway) in all my years of boating.
While avoiding that collision was a good thing, our troubles were not over.
We continued to track other vessels nearby on AIS and on radar, so it was very tense.
Slack tide at Deception Pass was about 10 AM, and I just had assumed that the fog would clear by then. As we approached I started to think about what it would be like to transit the pass in dense fog conditions, and I was very uncomfortable with that.
I have only been through the pass once, and I know that it is a very tight area, with not a lot of sea room to maneuver. I did not like the idea of trying to go through there in dense fog.
When we got to Deception Pass it was still very foggy so we made the decision to not go through the pass, but instead to work our way along the outside of Whidbey Island and make our way to Shilshole Bay Marina that way.
This map shows the blue line as the intended route, inside Whidbey Island, and the somewhat squiggly hand drawn red line is the route we actually took.
Even this route was not without its challenges.
It is more exposed to the Strait of Juan de Fuca, so we did get rocked a little, but not too badly.
And, even more importantly, it is the main north/south route for larger vessels going into or coming out of Puget Sound.
So we still had vessel traffic to contend with.
Fortunately even though we did track and avoid several vessels, we didn't have any more close encounters like the one with the sailboat.
Eventually the fog did clear, so the last several miles before Shilshole Bay were clear.
As if we hadn't already had enough excitement for the day, we had another scary event while docking at Shilshole Bay Marina.
The guest slips there are large, and there were few boats in the guest dock area, so we had our choice of slips to go into.
There was a stiff breeze blowing, but it didn't really concern me.
By this point we had been underway for about 3 weeks, and had been into and out of countless marinas and fuel docks, and we had our docking "system" down pretty well.
Karen would stand ready with both the stern line and the mid line and jump out on the dock as soon as it was safe, and she would yell to me, since I could not see her from the flybridge.
So we came into the slip bow first, and she jumped out as normal and called to me.
I came down and jumped out grabbing the mid line as I did.
By this time the boat was starting to swing way out away from the finger float, at an angle with the stern still tucked in.
There was no other boat on the other side, but we were starting to lose control.
I quickly wrapped the mid line around a cleat and Karen still had hold of the stern line, but the boat was swinging wildly.
I looked at it and thought that I had neglected to put the starboard engine in neutral when I came down and that's why it was swinging out like that.
By this time there was so much pressure on the mid line that I thought it might snap.
I called to Karen and told her to jump on board and put the engines in neutral.
She jumped on board, but found they were already both in neutral, and it was just the power of the wind that was swinging the boat.
Meantime I was trying to pull the boat in by the mid line, an inch or two at a time, and wrap more bites around the cleat. I managed to scrape most of the skin off my index finger while doing so.
But little by little we were able to pull the boat in and get her tied off to multiple cleats.
It was a scary ending to a scary day, and we were relieved to be here and to be safely moored for the night.
Here are some photos from in and around Shilshole Bay Marina.
We tried to find an "official" sign for Shilshole Bay Marina, but could not find one.
So Karen found a little insignia at the base of this sign that proves we are actually there.
Faraway in her slip at the marina. Boy, it was a scary landing into this slip.
Worst case, the boat would have swung out into the fairway and eventually slammed into boats on the other side.
As we were entering the breakwater we saw this guy on a paddle board just outside.
It looked very uncomfortable to me and I was wondering why someone would do this for fun.
This is a shot of the main marina offices.
This building houses their main office, some rest rooms, some boat dealers, and a few small shops which are accessible from the other side.
Another visitor on the floats.
There was a 92' Selene yacht tied near us.
You can see Faraway just off her stern.
Make us look pretty darn small.
Yikes! Looks like a battleship from this angle.
In the evening I enjoyed an 8 minute shower for a dollar, as compared to 1 1/2 minutes for 2 dollars at Dawsons Landing.
Wednesday May 23rd, our last day underway.
We did not have far to go, only about 25 miles further to Gig Harbor.
Here is the route from Shilshole Bay Marina to Gig Harbor.
Pretty much a straight shot with a slight jog around Vashon Island.
We didn't need to get an early start and I wanted to be full on fuel when we got there, so we had a leisurely pancake breakfast and then moved over to the fuel dock when they opened at 9 AM.
A couple of funny things happened at the fuel dock.
Karen was minding the fueling and so I went over to help another boater get alongside the dock.
He was in about a 32' Bayliner, with twin engines, but no bow thruster, and he was trying to come alongside to a side tie.
The wind was in his favor and all he really had to do was sit there and the wind would have pushed him right into the spot.
But he was furiously working those engines, back and forth, forth and back, and really not making any progress toward the dock.
I patiently waited, and eventually he got close enough to throw me a line, and I hauled him and tied him up.
I had waited at least 10 minutes there so I expected at least a thank you, but no.
The first thing he said was, "I have to take a conference call that will last about 15 minutes, is it OK if I just stay tied up here for that?"
I told him since I did not work there as far as I was concerned he could tie up all day if he wanted.
I guess he thought I worked there.
As I left him and headed back to my boat another boater came up to me and asked me the price of fuel here. I told him I'd let him know as soon as I was finished fueling up. He also said he thought I worked there.
Guess I look like a fuel dock worker.
While we were fueling up I saw this man with his 2 small kids on a paddle board.
I ran to get my camera, and while jumping on board I slammed my head against the ceiling and darn near knocked myself out.
I thought, how many hundreds or thousands of times have I gotten on this boat without doing that?
The dock at the fuel dock is higher than normal and I was in a hurry to get my camera - so that's my excuse.
In any case, we took on fuel and pulled out of there about 10 AM in sunny weather with a very slight breeze.
Here are a couple photos we took while underway on this last leg of our trip.
Karen works on her homework on the last leg of the trip.
The Garmin GPS shows the very last part of the route before you turn into Gig Harbor itself.
I have read that this light house was built by, and is maintained by, the people of Gig Harbor.
This is our destination, Gig Harbor.
I had made arrangements for a slip at the Gig Harbor Marina, which is on the left just as you clear the entrance.
The entrance is pretty skinny and shallow, but we were arriving right at high tide, so depth was fine.
The assigned slip was next to a fairly beamy sailboat, and the opening looked tiny to me.
But I was highly motivated to get into that slip after such a long journey.
I had to back in because the slip was not long enough to go in bow first.
I had Karen on high alert, and it was a tense landing, but I got in there without damage.
In our excitement to get in and get secure and start the next phase of this amazing adventure, we neglected to get a picture of Karen standing next to the boat at the slip.
I have spoken to the management of the marina and have requested a different slip.
It is so tight here that now I am afraid to leave, for fear I will never get back in there.
PS: Less than a week after arriving here someone hit my bow pulpit on the way into their slip.
Ah well, not much damage at all on my boat, but many thousands of damage on his boat.
Voyage completed.
