Friday 14 July 2023-  Waddington Cove, Broughton Marine Park.  Departure 0700. Arrival 1000. 50º43.0’N 126º36.8’ W At last we leave Port McNeil and head into the Broughtons, though their many shades of blue until we nestle in among the green shores with their ancient clam gardens and drop anchor. It’s so good to be back in one of our favorite places.

Sunday 16 July 2023 – Forward Harbour  0630 departure, fog.  Fuel in Lagoon Cove.  1430 arrival 50º 28.9’ N, 125º 44.9’ W. The thick fog of our exit among the islets of the Fox Group lifts to provide a glimpse of the First Nation village on Gillford Island. The tower there drops messages into our phones so I read Jack the headlines from the New York Times daily email. Just enough news.

Knight Inlet is flat and the dolphins do not come out to play.  At Lagoon Cove, the fuel barge is delivering its load so we wait about 20 minutes. The place has not changed, apart from new rustic tables on the deck where Bill Barber’s stories became famous.

Lagoon Cove provides welcome nostalgia as Broughton marinas disappear.  Kwatsi, Shawl Bay, Port Harvey gone….even Minstrel Island was an option on our first cruise this far north.  The business is tough and they simply went out of business. Others have banished transient boats and become fly-in fishing lodges.

I chat with the manager, Kelly, a year-rounder with her partner and the handful of neighbors in this strategic location. At the far end of the still treacherous (for Jack) docks, I spot M/V Forever Friday and thank Randy and Joan for their kind check-in message that I’ve been unable to answer.

We’ve plan to anchor in Port Harvey or even Port Neville, but Johnstone is so welcoming that we continue on.  At the entrance of Sunderland Channel, we pass the tug Yacata pulling a rather messy timber raft of logs that appear to have been hand-felled, salvaged, or both.

Sunderland Channel has whirlpools but worse challenges are to come, especially for the Yaculta. A sequence of rapids needs to be transited, which requires careful timing. We turn into Forward Harbor to wait for slack at Whirlpool Rapids.

The Yaculta tugs its load into the long, narrow mouth of this long, narrow bay and soon is joined by a fellow vessel, hauling a log raft that is only slightly more orderly. Working together the two tugs consolidate each load, checking the cables as well as the lights that will be required as they approach their destination.

This area is actively logged. Camps appear for a couple of years and then buildings on skids or barges are removed. Logging is done in patches, which are cleared and planted in the same season. Cottonwood and ash grow quickly, filling roads pushed up peaks by huge machines. Third-growth evergreen saplings replace mature second-growth trees. The hand of man is everywhere in this area.

Anchoring in Forward Harbour, we put out 250 feet of the chain as the bottom drops off precipitously here. As we snug in for the night, rainbow appears. Nordic Tug Lil Moe is anchored nearby.  Last year at the Nanaimo docks, its skipper, Gordon, figured out our autopilot issue in an instant:  “Do you have something metal stored under the sink in the head?” Mea culpa. I’d stashed the lame hand vacuum cleaner that had come with the boat after adopting the corn hush whisk broom that sister Barbara had given me for Christmas. Metal throws off the magnetic compass that guides the autopilot. Gordon had solved that problem and the vacuum cleaner netted $5 for the Community Build at its April tool sale.

As I’m bringing up the anchor, Gordon appears in his dinghy, having walked the dog. I send him around to talk to Jack, who learns he’s 86 and plans to sell the boat. Sad, whatever the reason. This makes Jack and I realize we both have to renew our driving licenses this fall. Our car rarely leaves the garage and we know our way around without it. Still, we’re feeling some stress.

Monday 17 July 2023 – Shoal Bay  0945 Departure, 1130 Arrival. 50º 27.6’ N 125º 21.9’ W As we tie up, who should appear on the wharf but Jan Steinbock! This dear friend from OWSA (Oregon Women’s Sailing Association) has come to Shoal Bay to reflect and grieve the loss of her husband, sailing partner, and extraordinary individual Donnie Graham. When the two of them drove up to Port Townsend several years ago, we met Donnie for the first time but his reputation had preceded him. In a wheelchair and using a ventilator from advancing ALS, Donnie was living his days to the fullest, bolstered by Jan and his many teammates on ALS walks, rides, and rolls through the streets of Portland.

I hug Jan and have a good cry. In her little cottage that Mark McDonald has built for visitors arriving by water taxi from Campbell River, she offers me a cup of tea. When the pot on her stove is ready, we return to the boat and Jack. Chicken soup for the soul.

Tuesday 18 July 2023 –  Waiatt Bay, Octopus Islands Marine Park  0830 Departure, 1130 Arrival. 50º 15.9’ N, 125º 19.9’ W. There are three routes through the southern set of rapids and back onto the Johnstone Strait route home. First is Discovery Passage with the legendary Seymour Narrows. Second is the sequence of Dent Rapids and Yaculta Rapids that are manageable southbound. And finally, there is the Okisolo Channel between Sonora and Quadra Islands, which leads to Beazley Rapids in Surge Narrows. We take the latter so we can spend some time in the beautiful and sprawling Octopus Islands.

It’s a perfect day to deploy the dinghy. I go up top, remove the cover, attach the sling, remove the stainless steel stanchions that hold the lifelines around the top deck, make sure the plus in the sole is in place, winch the boat up out of its cradle, push the boom over the starboard side, and slowly lower the inflatable with the outboard in place down to the water. It’s not easy, but I am forever grateful for our mechanical system of mast, boom, blocks and winches.

Next is helping Jack into dinghy from the swim platform and making sure the seating is comfortable. Here’s what we come up with. It’s not perfect but it works.

Thursday 20 July – Boho Bay, Lesquiti Island.  0600 Departure to meet slack at Beazley Rapids in Surge Narrows. Arrival at 1400.  49º 29.8’ N 124º13.7 W. The 6 am departure is necessary to get us to Surge Narrows at slack. The narrows are both very narrow and very short. We enter within a minute of the charted slack and are astounded to find a young couple in a small rowboat anchored there watching a young male orca cavort and feast! Of course, different types of mammals and fish all use the same routes.

Boho Bay is such a blessing. We keep going back to this old friend that lies in the middle of the Strait of Georgia. Easy to get into, calm in the worst of weather, and lots of room.

Saturday 22 July –Saturday 22 July – False Creek, Vancouver.  Departure 0530. Arrival 1200. 49º 16.1’ N 123º 07.4’ W. It never occurs to us to make a reservation ahead rather than just call for a slip when we’re within shouting distance., though preferably not when we’re passing an enormous cruise ship under Lion’s Gate Bridge. So – still out in English Bay – we call Coal Harbor Marina. Full!

Oh wait, there must be a marina nearby with yacht club reciprocals, though we’d never tried that. So I ring the False Creek Yacht Club and the manager picks right up. They are full up.

“But no problem! Just drop anchor in False Creek.” he says. “Find a place inside the line of buoys that mark the channel. You’ll be fine. “

We thank him and look for a spot where we can dump a pile of chain in 15 feet of water. Folks on neighboring boats and passers-by are helpful. In the noontime sun, we find ourselves in the heart of residential downtown Vancouver. Traffic couldn’t be heavier. Kayaks, paddleboards, visiting rec boats, tour boats, pirate ships, and whatnot cruise the length of the creek in the noonday sun. Add steady steams of crosstown traffic. Colorful Lilliputian ferries shuttle kids with bikes and skateboards, parents with baby carriages, and market-bound shoppers between downtown and Granville Island. It’s chaos, yes, but a laid-back Canadian kind of chaos.

That is until the sun sets. It happens to be the Saturday night of the grand finale of the annual fireworks competition. We enjoy dinner as darkness finally falls, lights flicker on in the high-rises around us, and vessels of every shape and kind exit the creek, joining the throngs watching from the beaches, bridges, balconies, and miles of waterfront from the tip of Stanley Park to the University.

Known as the Celebration of Light, finalists this year are Portugal, Malaysia, and the UK. We’d be crazy to give up our free parking space. So we make do with glimpses between the buildings accompanied by the world’s largest chorus of Ooo’s and Ah’s.

Then it’s over. The United Kingdom is victorious. Now hundreds of vessels filled with inebriated folks who have been out far too late make their way back up the estuary. All I can make out from the cockpit of Morning Light is the succession of green nav lights. I can’t see the boats at all. As I shoot some video with my phone, I suddenly see a green and a red light looming above my head! Someone on the large fancy boat finally sees our anchor light and turns, just missing Morning Light’s stern! (The video will be posted as soon as I pay WordPress $4 a month, which is not so bad after all these years of free service. I may spring for a more expensive plan to protect any readers from ads for weight loss products and the like.)

Sunday 23 July  – Coal Harbor, Vancouver.  Departure 1230. Arrival 0130. 49º 17.5’ N 123º 07.5’ W The weekenders are moving on so we have a slip at Coal Harbor Marina right on Vancouver’s all-pedestrian corniche. We are sidewalk travelers and no city in North America compares. And where else can you take an elevator up to a light rail station and board a driverless train to a string of neighboring cities that lie like a string of pearls?

But when I set up Jack’s scooter on the dock, it doesn’t work! Bummer! We’re meeting friends the next two evenings! We take apart the little console on the handlebars and wipe off the sea slat with Q-tips but it still doesn’t work. I visit every bicycle shop on Denman Street in search of someone to assess the problem but every one of them is full of cycles needing post-weekend repairs. Big #FAIL.

So we do our best and have a great time with old friends. Frances drives down from Burnaby after her work at the Simon Fraser Library. She brings a good bottle of wine and we go to shore for takeout to supplement our meager leftovers. A very accomplished violinist, Frances invited Jack to join the quartets and quintets she organized for musical evenings when we all lived in Islamabad. Since she can’t get on the boat with her wheelchair, supper is served on the narrow float.

The wine is good and the pictures are fun.

Our plan for Tuesday evening was to jump on the SkyTrain to Burnaby to see Habib and Gulalai, also close friends since our Islamabad Days. They’ve recently returned from a trip to Afghanistan where they saw family, took excursions, and supported their daughter, a Columbia University PhD Candidate in Anthropology, as she continues her fieldwork.

So how do we manage to get together for supper? They set up a Zoom and we sit around our respective tables and catch up. Gulalai and Habib tell about their amazing experiences in Kabul and Bamiyan, which contradict the gloom and doom in the media. We share a wonderful evening of laughter and hope.

Friday 28 July – Watmough Bay, Lopez Island.  Departure 0600. Cleared US Customs near the Boundary Channel border using telephone and ROAM app. Arrival 1300. 48º25.9’N  122º49.6’ W. With its disarming views of Mount Baker, Watmough Bay is our jumping-off spot for what can be the most challenging leg of an Inside Passage cruise.

Saturday 29 July 2023 – Port Townsend, Boat Haven This day, the waters on the Strait and around Port Townsend’s Point Wilson lay down to welcome us back home.