Rounding Cape Caution on our Wedding Anniversary

June 9th, 2023

Forty four years ago TODAY Marlene and I were married. Over the decades we have experienced some monumental events: the birth of our two sons, Dane and Matthias; the death of our parents, Marlene’s Bob and Arlean, mine, Florence and Elmer and the birth of our first Grandchild to name just a few.

Through the years most of our wedding anniversaries have been pretty uneventful as the saying goes, a dinner celebration here, a gathering with friends to celebrate there, and unfortunately on one occasion in Ganges on Salt Spring Island when I fell off a 16th foot cliff while hiking. Helicopters were involved, an operation occurred and I have the lasting attributes of a titanium plate in my right shoulder along with 9 screws. This was nine years ago and I have recovered thanks to the fantastic surgeon Dt. Jonathan Shafer and the amazing PT care of Island Health Center. Eight years later I am about as good as new for a 68 year old man as could be: no pain, 95% mobility of my arm and mostly just the lasting memory of of my wounded pride over a stupid climb. And here we are now, entering into what will be one of our most memorable anniversary events.

As you will recall from our blog yesterday following our cruise up Johnstone Strait, we were pretty tired, no, more like mentally exhausted. We have been rushing through so many gates: rapids, straits, and floating logs, that we just needed a rest. But a couple things happened yesterday late afternoon. On the advice of our good friend Dave Vincinti we decided to contact Predict Wind, our primary app for weather conditions. We have been using them for most of our boating years, and while they are never 100% accurate (and they would never claim to be) there are well over 80%. And even their technicians advise to never just use them; have a secondary app available (for us it’s Windy)and listen to the appropriate weather and buoys reports. The company is based down under in Australia. When I contacted their support chat line, Maria came on in less than 15 minutes. I told her our situation and asked if they have a professional float plan service. She immediately recommend a company: Chris Parker, MWXC. When we were safely moored in Port McNeill we called him and explained our situation. He told us he could create a float plan for us and recommend a cruise route, day and time for departure. I filled out his form, paid for the service and sent off our boat information and tentative float plan. This morning when we got up at 6:30AM intending to have a relaxing day without a cruise to worry about however Chris’s float plan recommendation had come through at 0:600AM. “Today, Friday, June 9th, is your BEST weather window for the next week”. A bit groggy, we quickly got dressed, fired up the boat and were on our way by 7:00 am. Ideally we should have started out at daylight so we were roughly about an hour and a half late. But we decided to go for it, and speed up along the way as needed. Cap Caution here we come.

4:00 pm Update

We left Port McNeill at 7:00 am and entered Queen Charolette Strait about 7:45. The first half of the crossing was like glass and we were off to a good a start. As we entered Richards Channel we begin to feel more chop and ripples on the water which increased as we drew closer to Cape Caution. North of Slingby Channel we really started feeling the ocean swells. As we rounded Cape Caution the swells increased in size to somewhere around 4 to 5 feet with a wave interval around 10 seconds and 10knots of wind. None of this was a surprise; it was as Chris predicted and the ride was quite comfortable. After we passed by Egg Island and Table Island and proceeded North we started to feel the swells and chop on our beam and the ride became quite uncomfortable. Think cruising in a washing machine.

As we cruised by False Egg Island and Smith Sound things got a little more intense, but as we rounded the corner we could see our destination in the distance and knew things would calm down as we got closer to Fitz Hugh Sound, and indeed they did! We proceeded towards our destination at Penrose Island Marine Park and cruised into a beautiful calm setting in Fury Cove. We dropped an anchor and gave ourselves a high five.

Tomorrow we have a very short cruise to Pruth Bay to visit the Hakai Beach Institute and experience the white sand beach.