A brutal day on Johnstone Strait

Monday July 24, 2023

It was an exhausting nine hour cruise from Port McNeil to Blind Channel. “Johnstone Strait is a seductive and difficult body of water” as the Waggoner Guide appropriately says. The Strait starts at Chatham Point in the East and stretches 54 miles South along the northeast side of Vancouver Island. On a beautiful day the scenery can be breathtaking; I guess that’s the seductive side. The difficult side of the equation is that it is one long trek to get from one harbor to another. In our case to get from Port McNeil to Blind Channel. If it’s a bad day—and it was—it can be a very exhausting slog that you think will never end.

We left Port McNeil at 6:30 am. The forecast for the morning was mild seas with about 2 knots of winds and 4 knot gusts . We checked both BouyWeather and PredictWind in the morning before leaving, and we also looked at the Environment Canada website. Now let’s just say that most boaters have learned to ignore the Environment Canada predictions because they are almost always wrong or grossly overstated. Environment Canada said “Strong Wind Warning in Effect for Johnstone Strait”. OK, we talked, we considered our options and decided to go for it with a potential “out” 1/2 way down the Straits at a place called Port Neville were we could anchor and tuck out. For the first hour we had rain and glassy seas. As we like to say it was “As advertised”. But all that changed as we worked our way down Johnstone Strait. The wind, gusts and waves begin to build, and build, and build. For the better part of two hours we were taking 3 to 4 foot waves head on (thank God for that) with SW winds. The waves were crashing above the bow of our boat and onto the pilot house windows. It’s bad enough experiencing this realtime but the fear and anticipation that it might even get worse is what really takes a toll on your psyche.

At the height of the wind and waves I saw another boat on AIS behind us. (Misery loves company?). I clicked on the boat name and up popped: Wyrill. Interestingly, upon review, the boat is a Custom Boeing 62 foot wooden boat. Long before Boeing got into planes they were building boats and this was one of their first classics. Wyrill was build in 1931 as an inspection cruiser for Pacific Mills off Ocean Falls, BC by the Boeing Aircraft of Canada company in Coal Harbour, BC. She is the second vessel of the same name for the company. The first, a narrow-beamed 50 boat was destroyed by a fire in 1929 and sank. A very good place to pick back up my story. I hailed the captain of The Wyrill basically to talk to someone else on the Strait with us and determine if we were about to meet our fate together. OK, I know overly dramatic, but it felt like this at the time.

“Captain, I see you on our stern. How are you doing on this lovely day in the Straits?”

“Well, I’ve had better days. It’s OK just really wet.”

And wet it was, the rain was pelting down hard.

“Where are you headed?”

“I heading for the 4:30 crossing of Seymour Narrows and I believe the seas are going to improve within the hour”.

And , he was correct. Soon after speaking with him the waves lowered, and the seas quieted. We were happy to have some confirmation that we were not crazy to start our journey this morning. We ended our conversation but tracked each other for most of the journey South.

The last hour of the cruise today felt like it would never end. The currents were running hard, swirling our boat, and it seemed we would never get to Blind Channel. I called ahead and told them we WERE COMING and would arrive about 3:00 pm. My concern was that I could see from AIS that the Marina was absolutely jamm-packed, a fact I decided not to share with Marlene. When we did arrive we were put into the last slip on the inside dock, and fortunately, as planned, we arrived at slack tide which made docking easy. And here we will stay tonight, watching the rain and giving thanks that we got here and are now settled in. “Can someone say single malt scotch please.”

On to Comox tomorrow, we think. . . .