6/14/2011
Gunboat Harbour, Gibson Island
Miles travelled: 41(?)
(Tor reporting)
We awoke this morning well rested but a bit early as the boys got up at 0630. The squally weather abated late the previous night but not before raining very hard and filling our dinghy with about 30 gallons of fresh water. Amazing how much water an 8 foot 8 inch pram can hold! We did not move any last night after Baraka broke away and anchored elsewhere in Ire inlet. The morning began with heavy rains and no wind, and a VERY low tide.
We have been referencing Ketchikan and Sitka tides for a few days already and last night was no exception. We awoke to quite a few more rocks than when we arrived the night before as it was shortly after a -2.6 foot tide. Kinda creepy to see just how many obstacles you were lucky enough not to hit coming into the anchorage!
Tor and Jess tag teemed the morning chores prior to getting Yare up and away. The oven had been left on the previous night and although it was too warm in the middle of the night for comfort, at least the coffee water was only minutes away upon waking. At 0800 Tor went up on deck, raised the anchor, and got us underway.
Ire inlet is about 4 miles long and quite skinny. It has a VERY narrow entrance that runs a fairly strong current at anything but slack water. Last night we arrived at high tide, but this morning we left only 40 minutes past low slack and witnessed quite a different scene. The Narrows was still over 20 feet deep, but the rocks were much more prominent as they were approximately 9-10 feet taller, and the current was running against us at close to three knots. No troubles, but fascinating how a few hours can change so much.
Exiting Ire inlet we turned to port and transited through Ala passage and narrows. This portion of the B.C. coast is lightly travelled and said to be poorly charted. Between Tor holding a paper chart in the cockpit and Jess referencing a digital chart on our laptop down below we easily navigated the tricky passage travelling at up to 8.5 knots. (Thank you Karl for getting our laptop working with our digital charts at the very last minute, they work beautifully!)
Just north of Anger Island (containing Ire inlet) is the Math island group. We spotted Cosine island before rounding Logarithm Pt. Next came Tangent Pt. to starboard and Sine Pt. on Sine island to port. Jess and I both had fond memories of chanting SOH-CAH-TOH in school to learn trigonometry. The cartographers were either very bored or quite frustrated with the math (don’t forget Anger island with Ire inlet).
The rest of the day turned into a windless foggy/rainy motor north through Petrel Passage (and narrows). We spotted two Whales in the distance before heading into Petrel Pass and were assisted north through the narrows with an favorable current of up to three knots. This current helped in arriving at our chosen anchorage long before we were ready to stop (the boys had only been asleep for 10 minutes on our new one nap a day effort). We decided to keep steaming and made it up to the north end of Grenville channel. The weather forecast is calling for fairly strong NW winds tonight and tomorrow morning (up to 25 kts) so we selected Gunboat passage as it is protected from the north but entirely open to the south. The massive pile of driftwood logs on the beach attests to the severity of the SW winds in this area. One of the logs was a complete tree with rootball that must have been 80’ long with a 4 foot diameter trunk. We were very glad to go to sleep in dead calm weather expecting winds from the NW.
Jess adds: Day 2 of Operation One Nap went well. Lars and Odin were cheerful all day and had a reasonable 1 + hour nap. It wasn’t long enough, but they’ll get there. The funniest part of the day was when I looked over at Lars during lunch which is right before their nap, and he was asleep! He was slightly rocking and his eyes were closed. I wanted to get a picture, but freaked out and worked to get them to bed as soon as possible, since it was obviously needed!
Grey rainy day for motoring, but it was beautiful!
Gunboat Harbour
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