On Monday morning we left Nanaimo at 9am and proceeded 80 miles north to a beautiful anchorage at Gowland Harbor, near the town of Campbell River. It was a long day – we didn’t put the anchor down until 7:30 pm or so. Quick dinner and check of the weather and headed for bed because our plan for Tuesday called for getting up at 4:30am to head for Seymour Narrows to hit slack current at 6am.
Tuesday morning’s forecast still looked ok so we weighed anchor at 4:55am in the early morning dawn and headed out. Not long after we started Dall’s porpoises were jumping all around us – a good omen!
Seymour Narrows has a fearsome history.
The currents run very strong through here on ebbing and flooding tides, up to 16 knots. There used to be a large rock on the right side called Ripple Rock. Over the past couple hundred years many people and boats were lost, in part because of the rock. Two attempts were made in the first half of the twentieth century to blow it up – only the second time in 1955 did it succeed, making this a less scary but still serious narrow channel to navigate to go north.
We hit it at exactly the right time. No whirlpools or overfalls to scare us and push us around. The rest of our journey north through Johnstone Straight was sunny with a few exciting times at the mouths of channels where tide rips and whirlpools pushed the boat around and Larry had to hand steer aggressively. We also passed the 30 or so sailboats gathering for the start of the Vancouver 360 race which started at 9am just after we passed from West Thurlow Island.
Now we are tied up the dock at Port Harvey. We visited here 7 years ago on our trip to the Broughton Islands and really enjoyed the spot. Sadly, the marina is closed now because the owner suddenly passed away a year or so ago. One ties up here at your own risk. Since we are with our friend Ted who builds docks for a living, and he thinks it checks out, we feel secure.
Before heading for a nap, Larry and I went for a walk to revisit the path where I had a bear encounter with McGee on our last visit. It is now quite overgrown in parts before getting to the forest path, so Larry decided to bushwhack the path back and get a workout in.
He was imagining himself slaying many Vikings or white walkers from Game of Thrones but acknowledged he might not last very long if his life depended on his swordsmanship. He did do a nice job of opening up the path.
We did not meet up with a bear this time, but they are definitely around from the scat evidence.
Now we wait to see if we catch any crab and for what the weather brings in the morning.
MV Miss Miranda 