The Dreaded Queen Charlotte

When we woke up our plan was to make it to Fury Cove so we could leave early in the morning on Saturday if the weather allowed. We left the dock at 9:30 a.m. and again we were traveling with a favorable current. In Fitz Hugh Sound we saw so many whales we had to keep stopping, sometimes because they were crossing our path and sometimes just to take pictures.

As we cruised along in Fitz Hugh Sound we were listening to the weather radio. The three reports we were listening for--West Sea Otter buoy, Egg Island, and Pine Island-- indicated that the wind and the waves were favorable to us, but most people leave early in the morning to make this crossing. We decided that we would go even though we wouldn’t even start crossing until the afternoon. While we were nervous about this decision, what we were seeing with the weather seemed to indicate we could do this. So we went!

As we traveled past Calvert Island where we were completely exposed to the Sound the swells began to build. Wind was fairly light so we didn’t have anything more than one foot chop (that’s good). The swells kept getting bigger, but they were spaced far enough apart that we bobbed over them like a cork on the water. About Egg Island we estimated that the swells were nine to twelve feet high but we were still doing fine and moving fairly quickly. Just before we reached Pine Island we noticed dark clouds and rain moving in. This made us very nervous because we were afraid it would also bring wind. We started looking for some options for where we could get out of the way if it did but we decided we were committed and would just have to keep going. Thankfully we only had rain with the cloud and things started settling down considerably after we passed Pine Island.

We stopped in Port Hardy after traveling 105 miles in just 8 hours and were extremely relieved to have that crossing behind us. This is by far the most stressful part of the journey both coming and going.