Sitting in the rain in Kumealon

Wednesday, May 28th

We waved goodbye to our safe harbor, Hartley Bay early this morning about 6:30. It was an uneventful rainy night which we will take after the day before. Here are a couple of parting photos

The local church.

Hartley Bay is a Native community with about 110 full time residents. There are no roads, only wooden walk ways, and the local people use small electric carts on the walkways to get around town. They have a school, but no grocery store (or any store for that matter) and they take a commuter ferry for the 80 mile journey to Prince Rupert for all of their goods and services. This makes our Guemes Island ferry look like a luxury. The community is “DRY”, which means that no alcohol can be brought in or consumed anywhere, including the dock and boats at the dock. The few locals who were out and about on such a miserable weather day we found to be friendly and pleasant. It is a unique place and although we didn’t plan it, I am glad we had the opportunity to see it. By the way we did “cheat” and have some Whiskey last night. We just kept the curtains down! Our friend Steve recommended we serve the libations in Dixie cups!

As we exited Hartley Bay and entered Grenville Channel seas were absolutely quiet which was quite a change from yesterday, but there was also a huge number of trees floating in the water, almost forming a barricade across the entire channel! We literally had to drive the boat around them, but unlike yesterday at least we could see them. The plans for our journey today were entirely based on the weather conditions. We saw that we had very little wind and quiet seas until about 1PM today, which meant that we didn’t want to chance trying to go all the way to Prince Rupert. However, we wanted to get further up Grenville Channel than Lowe Inlet, so Marlene searched the charts and books and we settled on Kumealon Inlet that had reasonable anchoring available, and put us in a position to get to Prince Rupert tomorrow morning before yet another blow comes our way. We arrived about noon and spent the next two hours trying to get the anchor situated. It is always hard when we come into an anchorage for the first time and of course another sail boat entered at the same time we did. The anchorage depth is deeper than what we usually try to find, (about 60 feet) but that is why we put extra chain on the anchor and believe me we put all of it down! The wind out in the channel did come up this afternoon and we could feel it, but we also feel reasonably protected in here, and it is a pretty place, from what we can see through all the rain. Onward to Prince Rupert tomorrow and back to civilization. We already have reservations at our favorite Sushi Restaurant for Friday evening. Hurray!