Rain pattering on the deck made it hard to get out of bed this morning.  However, the winds and tides were cooperating today.  We left the island paradise without delay at 7AM in somewhat of a downpour.  But what a difference a day will make!  With a south wind at our tail and running with the tide we quickly sailed on past our turn-around point making 7 knots.  Modulus got laden down with rainwater and began to put a strain on her tow line.  I hoped she’d be fine and kept glancing back at her.  By this time the wind and waves had picked up so that we were “surfing” so I needed all of my attention at the helm.  I should have stowed Modulus on the deck.  I can’t stress the fact enough to other sailors that it is absolutely necessary to have the ability to stow the dinghy on deck, without compromising sailing performance.  We sailed into Hardy bay in a rain and fog.  There was much confusion as we took moorage in the the harbor, for many things had changed.  The fuel dock was gone.  Apparently all the marine ESSO stations along the BC coast have shut down due to environmental liability issues.  What a headache that will be for so many fishermen!  Then we went to the wrong “E” dock (the other one was unmarked) where we rafted to a fishing boat.  We finally moved to the right dock after an hour of jockeying around the harbor and took a nap, only to be woken up to move again because we’d been assigned to a charter boat slip.   To ice the cake, the marina had shut down their hot tub and turned it into an exercise gym because they were shut down by the health department.  Oh well, you can’t come back to the same place twice.  The harbor was still teeming with bald eagles as it was years before, and we even spotted our first Humpback whale spouting out in Hardy Bay!  I didn’t expect to see our first whale of the voyage from land.  We spent the remainder of the day walking around town and laying in supplies.  I always chuckle at the name of Port Hardy’s grocery store, the “Overwaitea.”  Seems like something you could only get away with in Canada.  I also bought a great pair of gumboots which will keep my feet warm in Alaska.  So far, everything on the voyage has gone smoothly and I found myself in port with nothing to do!  It is a nice feeling to have everything working so well.  Usually town is so hectic!

We departed in the early morning calm and steamed through the Knight Inlet toward Mamalillaculla, an abandoned Native town.  Along the way many dolphins surprised us by leaping out of the water all around the boat.  By 10AM we anchored off the village and pulled on our rubber boots to explore.  Mamalillaculla has an original long-house frame, made of massive cedar posts.  The town is built on top of 12 feet of broken oyster shells, a testament to the amount of time it was inhabited by humans!  We also found rotting totem poles in the woods, and many decrepit old wooden houses that the missionaries built.  The village was extremely overgrown in a thick mat of thimble-berry bushes.  We clawed our way through the 8′ deep thickets humming loudly with bees.  There was plenty of bear scat around, and many places where the ground had been excavated by a bear clawing for grubs, so we made some noise.  We could only see a few feet in front of us as we swam through the bush.  Suddenly we realized that the whole entire village was writhing with thousands upon thousands of snakes!!  Literally everywhere we looked were several snakes.  They heaped up into big snake-balls and tangled coils with each other on the warm rocks and the rotted timbers of the old buildings.  Colleen thinks the snakes are ghosts of the Natives.  I think they are the ghosts of the missionaries.  After each step we took, we could hear the snakes whispering off into the tall grasses.  We left Mamalillaculla and returned to the boat, leaving the village for the bees and snakes to rest and rot in peace.  In the afternoon we passed by the town of Sointula, on Malcolm Island.  Sointula was founded by a group of Fins looking to build a utopia, and the name means “harmony.”  The town looked very attractive through the binoculars, and I had a strong impulse to turn in there for the night.  However, we were pressing for Port Hardy 25 miles further along, and I ignored my intuition.  I should have listened!  Out in the wide open Queen Charlotte strait a fierce NW wind licked up an ugly steep chop against the current, halting our forward momentum while at the same time thrashing the boat.  Soon we were making very little distance to windward and the bow was plunging into each steep wave.  After some deliberation we fell off the wind and flew back to Sointula.  We were only 8 miles to Port Hardy, and back-tracked all of our hard-earned hours in the Strait.  It was a tough decision, but entirely the right one.  Prudence is rewarded at sea.  The waves continued to grow steeper and chased down on our stern back to Sointula.  The wind increased well into the evening and it felt great to be all tied up in a snug harbor, while we watched the Strait turn into a smother of whitecaps.  We spent the evening exploring Sointula on foot.  I’ve never seen a town with so many incredible carpenters!  Every house had a stack of prime lumber beside it, and the sounds of various saws and woodworking tools issued from many backyards and garages.  Sointula is a beautiful community with incredible gardens and finely crafted homes.  I couldn’t help thinking about the thrashing we’d be getting still if we hadn’t turned back when we did.

The morning was still except for the soft sounds of rain tapping on the cabin top.  I awoke feeling completely stuffed from last night’s dinner, and we still had leftover bread and cake for lunch.  As usual this week, we needed to get an early start to ride the tides.  Currents run strong through Greene Point rapids, Whirlpool rapids and all the narrow channels in between.  In the morning I had a strange assuring feeling that we’d see a bear soon, which later on turned out to be true.   Paul and his mom left their dock early as well.  They were off to Campbell River to re-supply with food for their next guests.  His mom had done up her hair in anticipation for the “big day in town.”  Like true North coasters, they sped off in the rain in an open boat, with no windshield or rain gear of any kind.  Colleen and I departed soon afterwards, but not before taking on Oleo’s famous spring water fresh from the snowfields above.  We reluctantly departed and sped off through the Greene Point rapids at 10+ knots.  Colleen and I traded off at the helm and it gradually stopped raining.  In the afternoon I was down below monitoring the weather and studying charts when I suddenly thought about the bear again.  I shot up, looked out the port-light, and immediately spotted a bear on the far shore.  We nosed right up to him on the beach, with our depth sounder on.  The bear was flipping rocks and boulders over and eating the crabs that hide beneath, at low tide.  He didn’t seem to care about us one way or another.  I positioned the boat downwind so he couldn’t smell us.  But as soon as the boat came upwind, he looked up and stopped eating.  Right around the next bend we came across a second bear on the beach, doing the same by flipping the boulders around and foraging for crab in the low tide.  Very cool.  We’re lucky to see our first bears so early in the trip!  Soon we entered out into the dreaded Johnstone Strait.  The winds blew fresh from the SW, filling the sails nicely as we flew down the Strait.  Last time I was out there several years ago I had a hair-raising sail in a southeast gale.  Johnstone Straight acts like a wind tunnel, funneling the winds between Vancouver Island and the mainland.  We got really lucky today.  All too soon we swung NE into the Havannah channel, and finally bucked a nasty tide through the Chatham channel.  We’d been so lucky with winds and tides up tp that point, so now it was time to pay the price for a good day’s run.  Finally we clawed our way into Cutter Cove and anchored up for the night.  A strong west wind poured into the anchorage, but we tucked in behind a log raft and held secure there with lots of scope out.

I determined today that it is better to leave Bellingham on the new moon instead of the full moon.  The tides would work out a little better on the inside of Vancouver island.  Tides dictate everything on this route.  With our timing this time, our departures need to be very early for the tides and currents to work.  That means we have to run awhile before the winds pick up.  The early departures make for some long-mileage days, however, which is good for morale early in the voyage.  We pulled up the anchor at 5AM and motored out onto the still mirror of Malaspina strait.  As soon as the sun came over the mountains a stiff breeze developed from the south and we had a great sail past Powell River and right into Lund.  Lund is one of our favorite little towns, not to be missed.  We tied up for an hour and ate lunch at the bakery there, and Colleen got a great deal on a new sweater.  Through the afternoon we had a relaxing sail in the sun, throughout the length of Desolation Sound.  The winds and currents gently pushed us along to the mouth of the Devil’s Hole rapids at just the right time.   All of the math from yesterday’s calculations paid off!   At first viewing of the rapids, they were a torrent of whitewater coming toward us.   We stood off at the entrance for an hour or so, waiting for the rapids to subside, and reverse direction.  The trick is to go through just as they reverse direction.  Even the whales will line up and wait to go through then, too.  I was humbled by the force of the rapids today.  Even though it is a neap tide they are still extremely violent today.  Suddenly the waters calmed before us and we gunned it through the rapid.  Other than a few boils and smaller whirlpools, we had a smooth transit.  Soon we were through and turned the boat north into Frederic Arm for the night, to Oleo’s restaurant.  Oleo has since passed away, I sadly learned.  His son Paul and his mother did all of the cooking and serving that night, just like I remembered it.  They lease a spot of water from the BC crown and operate a floating restaurant in the wilderness there.  It was great to see Paul again, and we talked late into the night.  He just got a new speedboat and says it’s just the “cat’s ass.”  Paul had re-built the restaurant and served a terrific meal of greek salad, chicken, loaves of home-made bread, and a huge chocolate cake.  Perfection in the woods!   Oleo was an old character who used to tell people he hid all of his gold in trash bags in the basement (the house sits over 40 feet of water).  He would be very proud of Paul and his mom carrying on the business so well.   The food was just as I remember it from years before.

The first float plane droned out of the bay on take-off at 0800 sharp.  The wake-up call of the north country.  Colleen and I ate a quick breakfast of cereal and made the boat ship-shape for the Strait of Georgia.  We found the Straits lumpy today, with a big sloppy chop rolling down from the north.  The motion of the boat is what I call “bucking a chop” and was uncomfortable for several hours, but it soon settled down at the turn of the tide.  The military torpedo testing zone, area Whiskey Golf, was inactive today and we were able to cut a route right down the middle of the strait.  We passed through an area marked “disused explosives” whatever that means.  A southerly breeze kicked up when we entered Malaspina Strait and made for a great sail in the sunshine.  It was here that Colleen enjoyed the first-ever hot shower aboard Silent Partner!  Our new solar shower heats up great on sunny days like this.  It was a major advancement in personal hygiene today, one of those things that I have to ask myself “why didn’t I think of this until now???”  All in all, we were out on big water most of the day, miles from land.  I always get a bit restless in these waters in anticipation for the tidal rapids and other challenges to navigation ahead.  Tomorrow we go through the Devil’s Hole, one of the strongest tidal rapids in the world.  I spent several hours today crunching numbers to figure out our timing through the channels leading to the rapids.  We need to take the right currents and arrive exactly at slack tide for a safe passage.  Now, if I can just remember what day it is, things would be a lot easier…  Our anchorage in Vananda catches a bit of wake from the commercial traffic in Malaspina Strait.  It is a neat little cove though, with a really cool lagoon.  We dropped anchor near the entrance to the lagoon and went rowing into the backwaters after dinner.  We found a very interesting old shipwreck in the swamp there.  I also found the king of fenders floating back there.  It is a big round orange float, referred to by some as “elephant testicles”.  Colleen didn’t share my enthusiasm for the testicle.  “That thing is going to stink up the boat, and where are you going to put it?”  I deflated the testicle and gave it solitary confinement in the dinghy.  It was an excellent find, and will come in handy in the future.

Our 5AM departure was quiet and without fanfare.  Going on a voyage in Silent Partner now is like putting on a comfortable pair of pants.  The wind hadn’t picked up in the night as forecast, so we motored across the bay, smooth as glass with the rising sun.   Last night the seagulls spattered poop all around the decks.  Colleen had just scrubbed them to a sparkle the day before, too.  My next-boat neighbor Matthew has a theory about the gulls, that they wait for someone to clean something and then use it as target practice.  I whole-heartedly agree.  The animals are smarter than we give them credit for.  Many believe that the gulls are spirits of the old sailors.  Knowing a few sailors myself, I can understand their motivations.  At 10:30 we crossed the Canadian maritime boundary, and I ran the maple leaf up the mast.  The GPS indicates an underwater cable that runs along the bottom of the ocean along the whole border.  I wonder what that does?  As usual, we cleared Canadian customs with a simple phone call.  No searches, no suspicion, polite and friendly.  We continued on our way through the Gulf Islands, and exited out into the Strait of Georgia via the Porlier Pass.  The pass is channel with intense tidal rapids.  Because it is near the full moon the tides were particularly strong and the rapids were full of wildlife.  Seals had gathered in great numbers to eat the fish that got flushed through the rapid.  Bald Eagles chittered overhead and the whole scene was abuzz with activity and motion.  Silent Partner flew through the whitecaps in the rapid and got spat out like a watermelon seed, into the big Strait of Georgia.  The winds died down soon, and there was not enough to sail by.  The water turned a murky brown color and I scanned the horizons for a tennis shoe.  Recently several human feet in tennis shoes–all right feet and all size 10–have been found floating in these very waters.  I had no luck today in solving the mystery.  Silva Bay is a crowded anchorage tonight.  Everyone is out enjoying a spectacular sunset.  We rowed about the bay after a long day on the water and took it all in.  The fishermen are talking about cocaine, the “sporties” (sport fisherman) are eating sea-cucumbers (gross!), and the sailboats are all fussing with their anchors and checking their swinging room.  Some of them could use a lesson or three in common sense, but some things will remain eternal.  There’s supposed to be a blow tonight and I hope to sleep through it all.  We’re riding on a 60 pound Forfjord, the good old “solid sleeper.”  Strawberry shortcake tonight, which is a first aboard Silent Partner.  We saw many porpoises today, a good omen.

Silent Partner is in veteran fashion, ready for yet another Alaskan voyage.  Colleen and I spent the day running around like hyper chickens, doing all those last-minute tasks that go on and on and on….  The list only gets longer as the time to leave draws nearer.  Tomorrow we’ll untie from the dock and become a self-contained pod, cutting our link with the wider world, heading out into the really wide world.  Tonight feels like the night before Christmas.  I am an astronaut on the launching pad, and all systems are go.  I’m too excited to sleep!  Today some of Colleen’s family from Snohomish came down for a sail in the bay, bearing gifts for the voyage.  While leaving the harbor my little Honda 9.9 conked out, and we drifted to the nearest dock.  We discovered a clogged fuel filter, and quickly made the fix.  I am glad to get that out of the way today, for it would have been an ominous beginning to our voyage!  We didn’t leave today because it is bad luck to begin a voyage on a Friday.  So, the fuel filter must be just a bit of Friday bad luck.  We had a fine sail on the bay.  I am so proud of Silent Partner.  After so many years, she’s the perfect boat for the trip north.  We’re loaded to the gills with food, fuel, water, and wood.  Tomorrow another chapter begins.  Life cannot get any better than this!

Silent Partner has been out for her trial runs this spring.  It has been a week of great sailing!!