June 13, 2023
To our great surprise and delight when we returned from our little jaunt over to Bella Bella yesterday we found fellow Nordic Tug owners Rob and Barb Hylton at the dock! Barb is a fellow quilter and a member of my quilt guild. They have been bringing their boat up the inside passage for over 16 years, so needless to say we were glad to see them and have an opportunity to ask them some questions and get some insights into plans for our journey north. After the “serious talk” they joined us on Tradition for some wine and we all walked up to the Shearwater restaurant for dinner, where they found some people they knew from their yacht club. We had a wonderful evening laughing and eating, swapping stories and boating tales.
Another interesting side event was the R2K racing sailboat, a dash 34, with Team Dacron and Denim, “Fighting Trousers.” They arrived limping in mid-day yesterday due to a sheared rudder. They are “dead in the water” for now but hope to have the rudder repaired by Wednesday so they can continue the race to Alaska. You can follow the race to Alaska at: rak.com.
But back to the matters at hand: our journey north. We decided to leave port early this morning to avoid an expected blow mid-day. Rob and Barb were also setting out this morning so we went over the upcoming weather and anchorage options with them and we all decided that to avoid the winds that were coming in the afternoon and enable a less bumpy ride around a small bit of open ocean waters, that an early start was necessary. We woke up early and by 0600 we were underway, with Barb and Rob just ahead of us. They decided to anchor in Rescue Bay, which was our thought also, but we were making good progress and decided to continue on to Bottleneck Inlet for the night. It turned out to be a great choice for us. By noon we were nestled into an absolutely beautiful inlet, surrounded by high hills and trees, a perfect place to ride out the afternoon and evening blow. Just before entering the inlet we were greeted by 2 Orcas cresting just off our bow and port side of the boat. This was a good omen for the evening. We are the ONLY boat in this lovely inlet, and it will probably remain that way. We saw a grand total of 4 boats today, and 3 of those were anchored back in Rescue Bay, so we are very much looking forward to a quiet evening as we plan our journey tomorrow.
Breathtaking photos.