29 May 23

To make it to Heikish Narrows by HW slack at 09:30, we got up at 06:30 and had the anchor stowed by 07:12. We followed “Baraka Bashad” and “Kristan Celeste” out of Windy Bay and headed west in Sheep Passage. At Finlayson Point we turned north-ish into toward and reached Heikish Narrows at 09:01; the narrows were calm. In another few miles along Graham Reach, we bid adieu to “Baraka” and “Kristan” and headed into Green Inlet. When we got to the anchorage, it looked very secure and pretty, but nothing remarkable in this part of the world. Also, it was very deep and was going to require running a line ashore. After a quick discussion, we decided to move on to Khutze Inlet. We went straight to the head of the inlet and anchored near “Baraka” and “Kristan” in 22 m of water just off the mouth of the Khutze River. The other two boats moved on after a quick lunch stop, but we decided to stay for the night. This is a popular anchorage; when we got here, there were 4 power boats already at anchor, and another 7 came in during the course of the afternoon. Hope we can find space at the marina in Prince Rupert. We settled in for a quiet afternoon, enjoying the awesome views up and down the inlet. Just after lunch, a very small hummingbird flitted around the boat for a minute; first one of the year. After an excellent dinner of halibut, we were sitting in the cockpit reading and knitting when we heard a couple of blows outside. At first, we thought it was just the harbor seals in the bay, but then we saw a humpback whale surface not 40 feet from the boat and dive right under us. They swam around the bay for a few more minutes, blowing bubble curtains and surfacing and then one of them breached, but we did not get any of it on camera. Still, quite a treat to have the whales come to us while at anchor. We also saw another bear )probably a grizzly) at a beach on the other side of the bay from the estuary.

53-05.437’N, 128-25.924’W; Log = 33.5, Sum (2023) = 616.1 N-m; Eng. hrs. = 5.5, Sum = 3207.8  

30 May 23

Another quiet night at anchor and a good night’s sleep on board, although it was cold (49 F) inside when we got up (08:00) and there was a light rain falling, so no solarium for breakfast this morning. After a nice breakfast of hot oatmeal, we started up the generator and the heater and ran them both for an hour to take the edge off the chill. It rained intermittently throughout the morning. We decided to take a break from traveling and sit tight for an extra night. Nine of the eleven other boats were gone by the time we looked around. We did a few chores, like tidying up the chart table, updating the maintenance log, checking all the headlamps, changing out batteries and charging them up, transferring files from the GoPro and Drone to the hard drive, etc. After a hot lunch of Good to Go meals, we were cowering down below, trying to keep warm, when, during a break in the showers, the sun came out and warmed up the solarium for a few minutes. While we were out in the cockpit, we spotted a lone grizzly bear feeding in the small estuary to the west of the anchorage.