20 May 22

What a glorious sleep that was: in bed by 21:30 and hardly a stir until 07:00. The sky was covered with a low overcast, so the solarium did not heat up as we like it, but we got up anyway. “Pelorus Jack” and “Grasal” were both motoring out of the cove just then and the big power boat near the entrance was already gone. After a leisurely breakfast, we decided to move a few mile up the coast to Joe’s Bay, up Fish Egg Inlet. As soon as we passed the northern entrance to Rivers Inlet, we were in new territory for “c’est le bon”, although we came this way in 2000 in “Prairie Rose”, with the kids on board, on our way to Haida Gwaii. Joe’s Bay is new to us. After we got anchored and had lunch, I launched the drone and flew around the cove taking photos and checking out the state of the rapids at the entry to Elizabeth Lagoon. I determined that the ebb had nearly stopped and we should easily be able to stem the flow. So, we rowed over to make an attempt. We got there at 13:45, exactly 1 hour before HW at Addenbroke, and the flow had just reversed and was flooding into the lagoon, so we shot through and rowed about 1.5 miles up into the lagoon. It was totally quiet with hardly any sign of wildlife and absolutely no sign of human activity any time in the recent past. By the time we got back to the rapids, it was about 1/2 and hour after HW at Addenbroke, but the flood was still running pretty strong through the rapids. Even so, I thought I could row through it. We made it about 80% through, when I just could not overcome the current and we got flushed back out. I took a breather and we tried again about 15 minutes later with the same result, even though the current was obviously less strong. Finally, 1.25 hours after HW at Addenbroke, the flow was sufficiently low that I was able to row through it without any particular difficulty. 15 minutes after that, the ebb current was flowing through the rapids. We enjoyed a cup of tea back on the boat, followed by Captain’s hour and dinner aboard in our private anchorage.

51-38.979’N, 127-45.645’W; Log = 11.7, Sum (2023) = 326.7; Eng. hrs = 2.5, Sum = 3161.0