From Kanish Bay (after sleeping in and having a leisurely morning with coffee on the flybridge), we pulled our anchor around 11:30am and motored toward Seymour Narrows. Afternoon slack was around 1:10pm. We arrived a bit early and had a nice boost of current pushing us through, around a very slow-moving log boom, and on to Campbell River.
We ran up to the Canadian Super Store (which is huge and extremely “super” if you haven’t been to one) and picked up a couple things for the next couple days (yay fresh veggies!). We also took the opportunity to go out for a nice dinner! Harbour Grill didn’t disappoint…right on the harbor (we could see Airship from our outdoor table), and the food and service were wonderful.
We shared some local oysters on the half shell and a caesar salad, and for mains Kevin had a beef tenderloin topped with crab and hollandaise, and I had a smaller one with cambazola and a blue cheese sauce. We even shared a dessert! Decadent!
We thought we might stay another night in Campbell River, but they were full, so on we went in the morning. The wind was forecast to pick up in the afternoon in the Strait of Georgia, so we figured we’d wing it and see how it was and decide if we wanted to stop and anchor in Ford Cove on Hornby Island, or continue on to another spot we have not stopped before — Northwest Cove (about 61nm from Campbell River).
We spotted two humpbacks just east of Comox, and I managed to get some fluke photos and IDs.
This one is called Neptune, first sighting on record in Birch Bay, WA in 2018, gender unknown.
This next one is Nova, and she’s a female, first official sighting in BC in 2018:
The Strait of Georgia was really nice for the first few hours.
And then, as expected, the wind picked up. We decided to pass on Ford Cove and keep going. It was bouncy for sure, with some confused waves, as the wind changed direction and we felt some of the effect of the winds off Qualicum Beach.
In the distance, I thought I saw a big white splash, but it was hard to tell with the whitecaps, so I kept an eye out, and pretty soon another. A humpback was breaching in the distance. These conditions are terrible for trying to get whale photos, but I couldn’t not try, right?
After a few breaches, it began to slap its fin on the surface, and then some much more dramatic tail-slaps where the back half of its body was so far out of the water! It looked like it was doing underwater cartwheels…so much power!! Most of the photos are crooked and blurry but I figured I’d show you some of those so you know it’s not all rainbows and unicorns when it comes to photographing whales. 🙂
Eventually, we pulled into Northwest Bay (obviously named because it opens to the northwest) and there were a couple sailboats anchored there already. It’s a large bay with a logging operation on one side and a small marina on the other, and several houses dotting the shore. We first tried to anchor between the sailboats and the log boom, but twice didn’t set and brought the anchor up covered in strips of bark, so we moved over the other side of the sailboats and had no trouble.
Cormorants enjoying the log furniture:
The sunset view from this bay was fantastic, and hard to stop photographing as the drama and the colors intensified.
We’re just 100nm from our slip in LaConner now.