Port McNeill Revisited

When we cast off our lines at 6:45am, we'd planned a short-ish day, knowing winds "always" come up in the afternoon, making travel on Johnstone Strait at least uncomfortable, sometimes scary. Instead we found no wind, flat water and a current pushing us 2-4 knots faster than normal speed at 1500 rpm, so we just kept going. 

And going, and before we knew it we'd passed our end-of-day destination. Note the 12.9 knot speed (almost 15 mph) in the top right corner of our chart plotter above. Wow!

Are you tired of photos of gray water and skies yet? Not us! As long as wind and water stay calm, we're happy. So 74 miles and 7 hours later, we pulled into Port McNeill near the top of Vancouver Island, further than we'd planned to travel today.

This place is special to us. It's where "Next To Me", our previous boat, stayed for a month after last summer's accident and our emergency evacuation. It's where Captain Bob Smith, a complete stranger to us and un-met until his arrival aboard "Next To Me", bringing her home to Seattle for us a month later, became part of our lives. It's where the helicopter that rescued us is housed. So this place is full of "Angels" for us. Steve and Jessica Jackman, owners of the marina here, orchestrated enough of that stuff to have become special people too. The boating world has lots of wonderful people. We are grateful.

Apologies for the lack of photos today. A school of dolphins repeatedly and gracefully breached in front of the boat, but we weren't quick enough to catch any on camera. 

We'll be here a few days doing an oil change, topping off fuel and water, laundry, groceries and other mundane stuff while awaiting a weather window suitable for rounding Cape Caution, the next "gateway" that stops lots of folks from moving further north. Still happy and well.