Joe’s Bay to Nettle Island July 1

This morning the sky is overcast with light rain falling.  We decide to work our way back to Effingham Bay and hike a small trail to an old Indian Village Site.  We arrive at Effingham Bay in much calmer waters and anchor securely.  It is still raining and we are reluctant to launch the dinghy and go to shore.  An hour or two later, the clouds have lifted a bit and we make good on our original plan.  We tie-up to a rock and wade through shallow water to find the start to the trail.  By the time we return, we will be walking on dry land.  A sneaker hanging from a tree marks the trail head.  Every few feet we find another trail marker, often an old plastic bottle with Japanese writing.  We wonder if these washed ashore after the tsunami.  The scenery is beautiful but the walk is challenging.  We have to negotiate getting over many large downed trees and lots of oozy mud.  The Village Site can only be imagined – there are no remnants of buildings and certainly nothing as precious as a totem pole.

 

We create a detailed route on our Rosepoint Coastal Explorer Software to get from Effingham Bay to Nettles Island.  The tide is going out and many rocks are beginning to come into view.  We are both in the pilothouse watching our progress while the Simrad autopilot steers the course.  We both notice that we have become dangerously close to the rocks and that is when we see that the software has stopped responding.  Barrie quickly engages the standby mode and steers us clear of the rocks while I try to figure out what might have happened.  I quickly grab the ipad that is running Navionics and give it to Barrie so he can continue to steer.  I am forced to restart the computer to get things functioning again.  We don’t know why this happened and until we can figure it out, we will need to be extra vigilant.  

Nettles Island is Pacific Rim Park Headquarters and in the southeast corner of the bay is a float home that serves the rangers.  There are already two boats in this cove when we arrive but there is plenty of swing room and drop the anchor in front of the ranger’s house.  A bit later another boat joins us.  It is clear that Barkley Sound has much more pleasure boat use than the other places we have visited on the West Coast.