We left Blunden Harbour this morning around 7:30am after deciding that conditions looked good enough to scoot up to Allison Harbour, 18nm further toward Cape Caution. The forecast for Cape Caution on Saturday is still looking good, so getting two hours or so closer today will help us out tomorrow!
Conditions as we left Blunden Harbour were very nice…calm on Queen Charlotte Strait with a little bit of swell under our hulls…an occasional otter bobbing along as we passed. However, as often happens, the further northwest we went, the larger and steeper and closer together the swells became. By the time we were set to turn in toward Allison Harbour we probably had steep six foot swells spaced about 4-6 seconds apart…so we extended our path (sailboaters call this “tacking”) 🙂 until we were fairly certain a 90 degree turn would put most of the drama on the stern, which it did, and then we watched the chart carefully as we made our way through all the rocks and small islets and into Allison Bay. We all anchored at the head of the bay with one other boat, and then went out for some dinghy exploring.
The water was ebbing through Nakwakto Rapids, and we went this far…just to get a look at Turret Island (in the background)…played in the swirls a little bit, and then headed back.
Missie (from Selene Melissa Lynn) took these shots as we maneuvered through a narrow cut out near the Murray Labyrinth:
And this nice shot of Dick from Ithaka, his Duffy 45 (cruising in his new Carbon Cat dinghy):
We hosted grill night dinner back on Airship and once again had another fun evening with this great group of people! Fingers crossed we have an easy rounding of Cape Caution tomorrow! Forecast looks good…we’ll check again after the 4am update and make the final call then.
Four our five more boats came in later in the day, and there are likely more waiting in Blunden and at Port McNeil, so Cape Caution will probably be a busy place tomorrow!