Saturday – We opted to leave our nice calm spot in Smuggler Cove this morning and go south down the Strait of Georgia rather than waiting for tomorrow, even though we knew there was a chance it would be bumpy. The forecasted wind (15-20kts except near Vancouver Island 25kts) would be from the NW, which means mainly behind us, but still with a long fetch where the waves could build. Turns out the waves were more on our beam than we’d hoped, so we ended up changing our direction for a while more to port, so that later we could turn 90 degrees to starboard and slam into it for a as we made our way over to the Vancouver Island side of the strait. Fun stuff. We saw whale spouts and dolphins and not a lot of other traffic — a couple of ferries and a handful of sailboats in a race heading south from Secret Cove to Silva Bay. The sailboats had to be loving it!! (Though we did hear two man overboard calls from sailboats to the Coast Guard — one a false alarm and one not — all people recovered, so we’re assuming it might have been some rough sailing!)
We cruised 52nm to Irish Bay at Saturna Island, right next to Winter Cove, which is where I think we stopped last year before returning home. It’s a little open, but there’s no wind and we might have a nice (albeit smoky/hazy) sunset view from here.
Update: No sunset vibes much at all. Just kind of a gray-orange haze. Oh well.
Sunday: We headed back into the U.S. (cleared easily with the CBP app and a phone call from the Anacortes office), and then on to our slip in LaConner.
We got in around 1:30pm and thought we’d do some of the boat unloading and cleaning, stay the night, and then drive back to Portland on Monday, but we had most of the stuff besides the freezer, fridge, and our clothes done by 3pm and then thought “why are we waiting, let’s just finish and go!” and so we did. We left LaConner around 5, and including a stop for some dinner we got home just before 10pm. It’s nice to be home!
Oh, and Kevin started putting together fishing videos…using the 360 cam on a telescoping pole (same way he recorded the dolphins on the bow) and here’s the first one (there will be three…he didn’t get an early start this summer, but next summer, watch out!) He says about these: “Fish with me aboard my 11-foot inflatable RIB on the Inside Passage of Alaska and British Columbia. We may catch something, or we may not. It’s real fishing.” 🙂
Thanks for following along with us this summer! We’re hoping to get back up this fall and winter for some boat projects, which we’ll of course share with you…and it’s been too long since we hiked around Sucia Island, so we hope to do that too!