July 13 - Leaving Port McNeil

Today we left Port McNeil and headed north.  We are leaving major grocery stores and other comforts behind as we move toward more remote places.  The skies were foreboding and the land seemed more distant as we traveled to Blunden Harbour and both of us remarked that the trip now had a more serious tenor.  In pouring rain, we anchored and began final preparations for tomorrow’s intended journey around Cape Caution (cue scary music).  Cape Caution is north of Vancouver Island, in open and unprotected waters.  The trip around Cape Caution is a true milestone for us and remains nerve wracking for even seasoned mariners. The waters and weather in this area are notoriously rough and unpredictable. There is much written (trust me, we have read it all) about how to try and guess what the weather and water will do.  Once we leave Blunden Harbour, there will be few places to take shelter during the six hour run.   We want to make a good decision based on the weather reports, which do not mention temperature but instead focus on the wave heights, visibility and wind direction and strength at various nearby weather stations and marine buoys.   We will listen to the weather one more time, at 5:30 a.m. tomorrow, before we decide whether to go for it.  Afternoon winds are always worse in these parts and so whenever we go, it will be an early start.  If we can’t go tomorrow, we will wait and see how it looks the next day.  There are about 10 other boats anchored at Blunden Harbour tonight; probably all on their way to or from Cape Caution.  I have heard, and it is borne out tonight, that the boats get bigger as you go farther north.  We are both a bit anxious. Before dinner, we went over to Eileen and Bill’s to review charts and talk about tomorrow’s trip.  Bill has the coordinates for where he was at different points as he rounded Cape Caution last year.  We took those with us and have plotted them on the various charts that cover our route.  Bill also took us down into his engine room to review how to bleed the engine lines of air, if necessary, en route (air in a line will cause the engine to quit).  On our boat, Rob used a Sharpie to label the parts he would unscrew or open if he needed to do this and also labeled each tool that he would use on each part of the engine.  We do not expect this procedure to be necessary but if it was required in these waters, Bill would not be able get off his boat and onto ours and we’d have to deal with it ourselves. I have plotted our route on the chartplotter so that we now have a paper route (on the charts) and an electronic route.  With our navigation and engine room concerns addressed, we secured the boat and made sure that there is nothing loose on the outside or the inside that could get thrown around while we are underway.  Every cupboard and the fridge will be latched and all counters and table surfaces clear.  On the back deck, we loaded everything that’s not tied down into a locker and finally, using the winch, we pulled the dinghy up onto the roof, and secured and covered it.  We are ready.  I think.