31 Aug 23

It was foggy when we finally got out of bed about 08:00. It lifted a bit at 08:30, so after breakfast, the Admiral advised that she was ready to make tracks south to get closer to her grand babies. I agreed, so we got going about 09:00, thinking we would go down to Khutze Inlet, where we stopped in early June, and spend a night or two. However, after listening to the weather forecast for Friday and Saturday (NW 20-30), we thought a more sheltered, and shallower, anchorage might be advantageous, so we decided we would carry on to Bottleneck Inlet, if the sea state was not too nasty when we got to the entrance to Khutze. The wind strength rose steadily throughout the morning, from calm at the start to NW 15-20 by noon, but the sea state remained no worse than “rippled”, so we decided to carry on. We motored and motor-sailed (with the full jib) all the way down Malcolm Passage, Princess Royal Channel - through Fraser and Graham Reaches, through the Heikish Narrows at 1 hour after HW slack (no problem), and entered Finlayson Channel (and new territory for us) at 15:41. By then, the ebb tide was helping us south and we pulled into Bottleneck Inlet and anchored at 16:54.  Long day, but we made some very good progress with zero stress on boat or crew and saw between 15 and 20 humpback whales along the way; they seem to be all over the place, fattening up for the long trek south, I guess. When we anchored, all alone again, in Bottleneck, it was sunny and warm, with a very light breeze - just enough to keep the mosquitoes away. No baseball game tonight. And that is August shot.

52-42.587’N, 128-24.191’W; Log = 55.2, Sum (2023) = 2572.0 N-m; Eng hrs = 7.7, Sum = 3519.7