Anchoring Out

We left Shearwater late in the afternoon after taking our time and recuperating from our trip across the Queen Charlotte Sound. For those of you who are following our blog who have no boating experience or have never been up this far, there are said to be three dragons on the Inside Passage. The first was the Strait of Georgia, the second Queen Charlotte Sound and the third the Dixon Entrance between Prince Rupert and Alaska. In each of these areas you are crossing a large body of water or you are exposed to the ocean, so you have to be prepared for extreme conditions. One way to do this is by listening to the weather reports and understanding what the conditions are where you are going and, as we are learning, sometimes you just need to try and see if it’s too bad.

Since we got such a late start leaving Shearwater we traveled only 50 miles in 4 hours and decided to anchor in Bottleneck Inlet. This is a beautiful anchorage on Roderick Island in Finlayson Channel. The inlet is almost hidden unless you know about it. The opening to the inlet is very narrow and at one point the depth is no more than 10 feet, which is no problem for our boat. When we arrived there were two other boats anchored together in the inlet so we found a spot to anchor off to ourselves. The weather has been so warm that we zipped in our screens to keep out the biting flies (which have gotten worse the further north we travel). We had a nice dinner and watched a mother seal and her pup swim around the boat, their two heads popping up periodically and then disappearing. In the morning, the inlet was foggy and we thought we would have another day of travel in the gray stuff. We were surprised to find that outside of the inlet the sun was shining bright and the water was smooth. We made very good time from there to Hartley Bay for fuel. We finally started seeing the fish jump during this stretch of the journey.

We arrived at Hartley Bay early in the afternoon and decided to keep going. We were hoping to make it into Prince Rupert by the end of the day. While we were fueling the boat, we talked to some commercial fishermen who gave us a gift of a huge piece of Sockeye Salmon they had caught. Yum! We finished fueling and set out for Prince Rupert. As soon as we came around the corner from Hartley Bay into the Grenville Channel we found ourselves in waves and wind. We kept telling ourselves that it was going to get better. We thought we were going during the right time because it was an incoming tide; however, what we did not realize was that there were high winds coming down the channel that was stacking up the waves.

We actually fought the waves for a long time before ducking into Klewnuggit Inlet Marine Park. The winds were in the range of 20-25 knots. There were a lot of fishing boats going the other way from Prince Rupert and I’m sure they were wondering what the heck we were doing out there. Once you get into the inlet there are two basins. One was already occupied by a sail boat so we went to the other one and anchored. Again it was a beautiful secluded spot. There was an eagle that was flying around and sounds of nature were peaceful. Don cooked some of the salmon we were given and we went to sleep before it was even dark. We are now far enough north that it is not dark until after 10 p.m. We traveled 99 miles in 9 hours.