Wednesday, August 3, 2016

Pruth Bay, Hakai, Calvert Island

We have a week before we "have to" scurry around Cape Caution, the big body of water open to the Pacific Ocean that can offer trouble if traveled at an inopportune time. Relatives are flying up from Texas, then others from LA, to join us aboard for a week each, so we have a "schedule" thing looming. Bob studied all the weather sources this morning, and the upcoming week looks bad for rounding Cape Caution except possibly Thursday, which may offer a good, if small, weather window.


So we pulled in our rafting lines and fenders from "Takahe", said goodbye, and set off southbound. With a dense fog line looming in the distance. Once more, we're pleased we took the extra day in Ketchikan to purchase and have installed a new radar unit when the old one failed.


Visibility was never so poor we couldn't see the bow, but knowing deadheads, and small fishing boats and sailboats with no AIS or radar are in the area, we throttled way back, sounded the horn occasionally, and donned polarized sunglasses which slightly improve visibility in the fog. An hour later, the fog lifted. 


The rest of the trip was lovely and uneventful, with occasional whales, eagles and lots of sunshine.

At 53 miles we pulled into the now-familiar Pruth Bay anchorage off the Hakai Institute and felt only awe at the beauty of the place. After anchoring, we dropped the dinghy and went ashore to take advantage of Hakai's satellite internet which they generously share with visiting boats, in order to check the latest weather forecasts. Thursday looked less good, but still the best to round Cape Caution.

While ashore we met Mike and Connie aboard "Anna", from Santa Cruz, CA. They also wanted to round the Cape soon and we're looking for help interpreting the more limited weather data they knew of. We invited them for happy hour to include a tutorial from Bob on the websites and data sources we use.


We hit it off with Mike and Connie, they stayed til 9pm, and we agreed to connect Wednesday morning to compare weather notes again. 





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