23 Aug 22

The wind went round to the NW, as predicted, late in the evening, which naturally turned us broadside to the swells coming in from the SW, from the entrance to the bay. So, we rolled about quite a bit during the night. The Admiral was not pleased and I was not pleased that she was not pleased, so I did not sleep well. At about 10:00, after we had breakfasted, John called up and proposed an attempt on Mt. St. Patrick, 1340 ft high and 2.5 km away, according to the trail map. Terri fixed us a lunch, but when we saw John and Laurie on the beach they said they were planning to eat lunch back on board after the hike, which would only take 2 hours. I doubted that we could cover 2.5 km of rough, west coast mountain trail along with 1340 of elevation change in 2 hours, much less 1, but off we went, starting the climb at 10:35. About 1.5 hours into the trip (about 12:05), we had gained 920 ft of elevation, but had only covered about half of the horizontal distance to the summit. The Admiral was growing concerned about the trip back down the trail, what with her bad knee, so we decided to call a halt there. John and Laurie were convinced it was not far to the top and carried on. Terri and I had lunch, then made it back to the beach at 13:49, a return trip time of 1.4 hours. We rowed straight back to the boat, cleaned off several layers of mud from our pants and shoes and had relaxing solar showers and proceeded to await John and Laurie’s return. Finally, about 16:35 (about 25 minutes before I was getting ready to call the Coast Guard and head up a rescue effort), and 6 hours after they departed on a 2 hour hike, they showed up at the trail head, looking tuckered out. Having already said that we were not going to spend another night at San Josef Bay, we more or less immediately got the anchor up and headed toward Sea Otter Cove. John called on the radio and said that they were too tired, dirty and injured to move, so they were going to stay put for the night. We tried to pick up a mooring buoy in Sea Otter Cove, but they are big industrial types that were impossible to pick up without sending a dinghy out; we were short-handed for that, so anchored just north of the line of buoys at 17:45.  

50-40.723’N, 128-21.003’W; Log = 3.5, Sum = 704.4; Eng. hrs = 1.3, Sum = 3020.9

24 Aug 22

Ah, we had a lovely, still night at anchor, even though the wind was blowing NW 5-15 all night long; hardly a ripple on the water and (most importantly, no swell rocking us from side to side). We were up by just after 07:00. After breakfast, I did a bit of maintenance on the aft head toilet, which has been backing up for the last couple of days. At 09:30, we talked to Massilia via VHF and agreed that we would move back over to San Josef Bay for the day, to do an exploration of the sea caves and another walk along the beach. We anchored in San Josef Bay at 10:40, immediately deployed the dinghy and went for a row around the sea caves and one good sea arch. After that, we rowed back to the beach and went for a long stroll on the flat beach, including a picnic lunch. The tide was too high to get around the last headland to the San Josef River and we declined to climb over the very muddy trail over the top of the headland, so we walked back to the dinghies. The anchor was aweigh at 14:15, and we motored back to Sea Otter Cove. Upon arrival, we first anchored just south of the line of 4 mooring buoys. Then, I lowered the dinghy and rowed over to one of the buoys with a mooring line, which I ran through the loop on the top, with both ends tied to a float. Back at the boat, Terri drove while I picked up the anchor; she then drove the boat right up to the buoy like a pro, I picked up the mooring line with a boat hook and got both ends on the starboard cleat. After we were secured, I got back in the dinghy and took the port side bow line to the buoy and back, so we were secured by two mooring lines. Massilia showed up about 1/2 hour later and rafted beside us. John made one snarky remark about how windy it was here compared to San Josef Bay, but shut up after I threatened to cast him off (it was not an idle threat). After they were rafted up, we settled in for the afternoon and evening.  

50-40.660’N, 128-21.000’W; Log = 7.5, Sum = 711.4; Eng. hrs. = 1.3, Sum = 3022.2  

25 Aug 22

It was windy and foggy when we awoke. After breakfast, I rowed over for a chat with the crew of “Kamala”, out of Cortez Island, regarding the trail to Lowrie Bay. We all rowed over to the north end of Sea Otter Cove at 11:30 and started up the trail to Lowrie Bay at 12:15. The trail was fairly flat (i.e., not more than a few meters elevation change), and was well marked and free of deadfalls, but was very boggy in several places.   We made it to Lowrie Bay at 13:00 and promptly sat down on a log for lunch, in the mist and the wind. Lowrie Bay has a beautiful, steep, sandy beach that is totally exposed to the NW, so there was a good surf breaking. We walked a mile or so up and down the beach, beach-combing and then collecting garbage to pile up near the trailhead; John and I collected quite a pile of empty water bottles, fishing floats, rubber inner-tubes, baby-toys, etc., a significant portion of it from Asia (i.e., Japan, Korea, China). We started back down the trail to Sea Otter Cove at 15:15, each carrying a plank of driftwood to place down on some of the boggier bits. At the first good bog, we placed our respective planks; mine was the last to go down and when I stepped on it, both the plank and my left leg sank in up to my knee. I thought I was going in all the way at first and had quite a time pulling my foot out while retaining my boot, which was, of course, then completely full of very peaty bog water. We finally made it back to Sea Otter Cove at 16:00, to find the dinghies about 65 m from the water. We all helped carry the two dinghies down to the water line and then finally made it back to the boats about 16:30, pretty well knackered (4 hours of walking through the bogs and on soft, sandy beach will do that to you). The clouds lifted and the sun came out for a few minutes during Captains Hour, as it does most days (I don’t know why the rest of the party will not agree to my proposal to start Captain’s Hour at about 13:00 and just carry on until we get sick of the sun). It fogged up again after dinner, but then cleared up a bit about 22:00, so we could actually see the stars for a few minutes for the first time in days.

26 Aug 22

Last night’s forecast for today was NW 20-30, so we had already decided we were going to sit tight in Sea Otter Cove until at least Saturday. We finally struggled out of bed at 08:30, to a windy, overcast morning; it rained a bit during the night. The morning was occupied listening to weather forecasts and thinking about when we would tackle Cape Scott. After lunch, John and I rowed over to the south end of Sea Otter Cove and walked over the short isthmus to the bay immediately to the south (facing San Josef Bay). It was a dry, 4 minute walk to a nice sheltered, shingle, log-covered bay, protected from the NW wind we were seeing in the cove. And it was also being patrolled by a black bear. We watched him for a few minutes, until he was within 100 m or so of us, then decided we should leave the beach to him. We had a long, upwind row back to the boats, after which I spent a bit of time checking the level of readiness of the boat to head to sea. Terri and I also spent an hour or so looking at additional options for the route from Port McNeill to Campbell River during her visit here, starting a week from today. At Captains Hour, the sun made it’s daily hour-long appearance. We enjoyed it and then had dinner, then had an early night in preparation for our anticipated 06:00 departure in the morning.