Walter’s Cove to Queen Cove, June 22

Last night we dined at the small restaurant at Walter’s Cove.  Definitely a local establishment with locals having a bite and using the internet.  We shed our rain gear, pull out our computers and settle-in.  The menu fits easily on a small blackboard and seems to be mostly hamburgers (they are out of chicken patties) and French fries but there is homemade soup (tonight split pea and ham), which I order and Barrie orders Fish and Chips.  The soup is good but my-oh-my the Fish and Chips are out of this world.  Three pieces of fresh caught Halibut the size of a handball, perfectly breaded and lightly fried.  We would order this again!

We head back to the boat when there is a lull in the storm and are comfortably on board when the deluge begins again.  I sleep in the pilothouse and listen to the pounding rain all night.  Our plan is to listen to the weather in the morning and assuming nothing changes drastically, we will leave Kyuquot Inlet and move south to Esperanza Inlet and Nootka Sound.  

Morning arrives and I put on water to boil for coffee while we listen to the weather on VHS Channel 1.  Environment Canada says winds for Vancouver Island North are from the South at 10-15 knots and will be dropping this afternoon.  The speed of the wind is not really a problem but the direction will fight with the swell and things could be a bit lumpy.  By staying inside as much as possible, we will only be exposed for an hour at most, so we decide to make the leap.

We head out Kyuquot Channel and work our way into Clear Channel.  We are protected a bit by small islands and large rocks but it is still fairly lumpy.  Before long, the cat is once again below decks and under the covers – how do you spell Fraidy Cat?  We run out of places to hide and are back in the ocean to round Tatcu Point and Yellow Bluff.  Now we are riding a rocking horse but thankfully with the high bow of the Kadey Krogen, there is no water on the decks.  In less the 5 nm we are able to turn into Rolling Roadstead passage.  Modern navigation certainly makes these narrow passages much easier to transit.  We try to imagine working our way between all these rocks without the aid of GPS and are in awe of the explorers who were here in the 1700 and 1800s.

Rolling Roadstead takes us to Esperanza Inlet and we take a left turn into Birthday Channel and then follow the narrow entrance into Queen Cove.  Caper, a 78 foot Ocean Alexander, is already at anchor.  We find a spot and easily set the anchor but find that the chain is rubbing on a rock.  We try resetting the anchor twice and ultimately decide that we would rather put up with a bit of noise than keep resetting the anchor.  The rain continues to fall and we each find a good book and a cozy spot to sit.  Shortly, Laperouse arrives and anchors in the middle of the cove.  We are invited to once again to have cocktails aboard.  We thoroughly enjoyed spending time on board with owner Mark and his guests Carolyn & John and KC and Randy.  We learn that Randy is the force behind the Ultra anchor and got a very interesting lesson about how anchors work in general and why the Ultra anchor is truly the Ultimate.  Such fine hosts they are that they picked us up at our boat in their tender and returned us to boat in same!