We left our anchorage at Mound Island just after first light this morning, around 5:30am. Conditions were calm, and according to weather information from reporting stations in and around Queen Charlotte Strait, things weren’t bad out there early but the forecast promised some ever-increasing wind in the afternoon today…so we opted to make our miles early. The group voted to cruise up to the Blunden Harbour/Allison Harbour to stage for a possible option to round Cape Caution on Saturday (rather than stop in Port McNeill). We all still have plenty of food (even produce) and there’s a lot to explore around here…even if we get stuck waiting a few more days.
Just as we exited White Beach Passage we spotted one humpback cruising east, but no photos.
The clouds cleared and the whitecaps began, but the worst it ever was was 3ft chop mostly on the nose. Sure, our boats got salty, but overall a very nice cruise.
Missie (on Selene 53 Melissa Lynn) took this cool photo of Airship with the rainbow:
We’re all anchored now in Blunden Harbour and as promised, the wind has picked up and we’re getting gusts in the high 20s right now. We expect to see some low 30s before things calm a little bit overnight, but we’re not certain they’ll calm enough to allow us to get up to Allison Harbour tomorrow morning, so we may stay here two nights. Luckily, it’s beautiful, and there’s a lot to explore by dinghy! We postponed grill night (not super fun getting dinghies down with the crane from the top deck in this wind), so we’ll regroup later tonight and in the morning via text after we see what the weather does.
Update: we definitely saw gusts in the 30s (34kts!) but it calmed down by late evening and the sun was out and we had a rainbow and everything. More pics:
We put out two crab traps but had two females and one too-small male when we pulled them tonight, so no crab dip.