It was a long day !

We left Bull Harbour at 4:10 AM. The four sailboats left at 3 AM as planned. Jim was up at 3 and watched them leave. He turned on our side deck lights so they could avoid the poles. They stick out pretty far. Jim saw one one the sailboats almost run into the back of another sailboat. He had to put it into a hard reverse to avoid a collision. Three of the sailboats were traveling together – the two Pacific Stars and Sorcery and the forth – Greybeard was going along just for the crossing.

When we left it was still fairly dark. We didn’t put the paravanes in the water right away and in hindsight we should have. Jim was worried about kelp around Tatnall Reef. It was pretty rolly for the first hour and Lilly barfed. Although we gave her the meds as soon as we got up.

The first part around the top of Vancouver Island – Nahwitti Bar area is very shallow and can have really strong waves and currents and best crossed on a flood tide or slack water with as little wind as possible. The area around Cape Scott is best crossed on slack water. Wind against tide can make for pretty nasty seas !

We had a pretty good crossing. The wind was light. We managed to get to Cape Scott right at slack water – along with the four sailboats that left an hour earlier.

It was foggy for most of the 9 hours we were travelling. The fog lifted a bit around Cape Scott and then we were right back in to it. Passing 4 sailboats in the fog ! Especially since one of them decided to attempt to sail and was tacking back and forth in front of us. And then once we got past that sailboat it starting tacking back and forth in front of Greybeard.

The autopilot was not happy with the 1.2 meter rollers and kept stopping. So it was a bit of a long and stressful day. Hand steering the boat in the fog and rollers! There was a bit more wind once we started down the west side. I was very happy to have this day over when we arrived at Winter Harbour around 2 pm.

We both fell asleep early and exhausted except Lilly who slept all day !