26 May 23

I woke up at 5:00 and never really went back to sleep. We finally got up about 06:15. After breakfast, we got the shore line in and anchor up by about 07:45. Then, I flew the drone around the boat for a few minutes as we departed the head of Roscoe Inlet. We both agreed that this is a beautiful inlet, and the warm water is a really nice bonus, but it is not as drop-dead gorgeous as Princess Louisa (it just does not have Chatterbox Falls), so we decided to move on. We may stop back in here in the fall. The cruise back down the inlet was relaxing (there was no head wind against us) and serene. Although yesterday was warm and sunny, today was a low overcast, sometimes misty kind of day; beautiful in it’s own way. On the way out, we made our first whale sighting of the year; a solo humpback was feeding along the very steep shore - we slowed down and watched him for 10 or 12 minutes, but he was never close enough to see well. We made it into Shearwater at 13:28 and topped up the fuel tank, new gerry can (we now have ~60 hours of engine time to reach Prince Rupert) and the water tank. After a quick run up to the grocery store, we were away from the dock at 14:03. We had originally thought to move the 7 miles over to Strom Cove (where we anchored for a night back in 2000, on our way to Haida Gwaii), but as we got going, we realized it was only another 13 miles to Oliver Cove (which is about 1/4 mile from another 2000 anchorage), off Reid Passage, so we just carried on, arriving at 17:00. The last half hour was a bit rougher than anticipated as the wind got up to 14 knots, on the nose, of course, and the fetch from Hecate Strait made for some lively wave action. Once we got into Reid Passage, of course, it was smooth as glass. Oliver Cove is a nice little anchorage with very good holding and we are only 15 miles from tomorrow’s planned destination.

52-18.710’N, 128-21.132’W; Log = 51.3, Sum (2023) = 515.4; Eng. hrs = 8.7, Sum = 3191.1