7 Jul 22

It dawned chilly and cloudy this morning, although there are small patched of blue off to the south. After breakfast, John and I rowed over to check out “Slipway Cove”, where Meares commissioned and built the first European-style boat built on the west coast. It was shortly captured by the Spanish, thus initiating the Nootka debacle and nearly starting another war between Spain and England; this disagreement was settled by the Nootka Accord signed in 1794 by Vancouver and Quadra y Bodega. Then, we rowed over to pay our respects and say goodbye to Ray. Hopefully, we will see or hear of him again; he is going to collaborate with a lawyer friend this fall to put together a biography/history of Yuquot. We got going just after 12:00. After sounding a salute on our way out, we immediately hoisted the jib, killed the engine and deployed the salmon fishing gear. We towed this all the way to our anchorage at Bligh Cove, at the northern end of Ewin Inlet; although we had a small salmon on the line at the end of the trip, it was too small to keep. Just as we entered Ewin Inlet, I deployed the prawn trap in ~100m of water. We will let that soak for a couple of days and collect it on the way out on Saturday. Bligh Cove is a bullet proof looking anchorage; very quiet, and of course, we are the only boats in here. At least we were until about 16:30, when another boat, a trawler from Blaine, pulled in and anchored on the other side of the bay. Still, we enjoyed a very pleasant evening, sang and played guitar a bit, and even got in a game of Triominos.  

49-39.005’N, 126-31.244’W; Log = 6.5, Sum 351.3; Eng hrs = 0.7, Sum = 2941.7

8 Jul 22

Summer has returned!! The day broke sunny and (mostly) clear, and it stayed that way most of the day. After breakfast, we rowed ashore and checked out the beach and campsite, the latter of which is totally invisible from the cove. Just behind the exterior canopy of trees behind the beach, there is one small campsite in a veritable cathedral of old-growth cedar trees, a few of which exceed 8 feet in diameter. After lunch, I launched the kayak and the Admirals went for a long paddle around the cove and took some interesting photos with the GoPro in the water-proof casing. John deployed his prawn trap in 28 m of water, using oysters collected from the beach as bait. I stayed on the boat and perfected the chords for “Roads to Moscow”. Another sailboat (“Fern” out of Everett, WA, with a toddler on board) came in and anchored in the cove, but we did not interact with them; our most crowded anchorage of the whole trip. After happy hour and dinner aboard, the wind died down and we enjoyed another lovely evening. I even squeezed in a quick solar shower, although it was merely tepid, rather than actually warm; still, very refreshing.