30 Jun 22

We slept like logs again last night, then woke up at 08:00 to an overcast, cool, calm morning. Lower low tide occurred at 08:30, but no bears appeared on the beach to amuse us. The cloud level had raised by the morning, so we could see more of the surrounding peaks, including a couple that still had traces of snow at the top. John and Laurie have some concerns about water and ice, so we decided to move on to Young Bay today; also, we got it here early yesterday and were able to explore the estuary at high tide, which will not be exceeded today. The anchor was aweigh at 10:51 and we motored out of Bacchante Bay.  Just out in Shelter Inlet, we turned into Megin River anchorage to check this place out; very nice, but we decided to press on to Young Bay. By the time we had pulled out of Megin River, the wind was SW 10, so we shut down the engine and had a nice sail all the way west down Shelter Inlet and up into Sydney Inlet to the entrance of Young Bay. We anchored in 16 m in Young Bay just after 14:00. By the time we got there, the clouds had cleared and it was a beautiful, sunny afternoon. After lunch, we enjoyed the lovely scenery; the Admirals have agreed that they prefer Young Bay to Bacchante Bay. I went for a row a few hundred yards up Cecilia Creek, but was blocked by downed trees and was unable to find any evidence of the alleged “rough” trail up to Cecilia Lake. We may try again in the morning. I rowed the Admiral around the bay for an hour, looking at starfish in the very clear water. And then it was time for happy hour and dinner al fresco. After dinner, I flew the drone around for a few minutes, but was unable to capture any photos because I forgot to “empty the trash” after I copied all the files to the laptop and “deleted” them from the SD card; so, it was still showing “full”. About 21:00, after dinner, we were sitting in the cockpit chatting, when Terri looked up at the beach (it was nearly low water) and saw a big black bear roaming around, grazing. We watched him/her grazing on grasses, berries and turning over rocks for crabs for 15 or 20 minutes. After it got truly dark, the bay seemed to come alive with fish jumping, seals barking and all sorts of strange noises.  

49-25.687’N, 126-13.135”W; Log = 15.1, Sum = 304.5 N-m; Eng. hrs. = 1.3, Sum 2932.7

1 Jul 22

Oh, Canada; it is Canada Day. So, of course, we leapt out of the sack at 08:00 and rushed up to dress ship for the day’s celebrations. We did not exactly have parades and speeches, but we did have fire-works in the evening. I hoisted the signal “GSX CAX ELV” (which translates to “Good Birth Day”; they do not have a 3-flag code for “happy” in the “International Code of Signals, 1931”). It was overcast and cool all day, with a bit of wind in the late afternoon. I flew my drone a bunch in the morning and got a bunch of good photos of the boats (appropriately dressed), but the videos were not so good; I have been getting a signal (Gimbal motor overload) for the last couple of days and the videos seem to have a bit of irritating camera shake. After the flights, I was finally able to re-calibrate the gimbal, so hopefully, this will solve the issue. In the afternoon, John and I made a determined effort to find the trail to Cecilia Lake, but it appears two years of low/no maintenance and limited cruisers, coupled with winter wind-falls, has caused (at least the start of) the trail to disappear. After happy hour and dinner aboard, John and I rowed ashore (braving the bear) to fill up a couple of containers with fresh water from the stream, for the solar showers. After dark, we fired off a few fireworks to see Canada Day off properly. Then, we played a late game of Triominos until bed-time.