Tuesday July 8th, 2025
It was an easy cruise down Johnstone Strait this morning from Lagoon Cove. Johnstone can be a particularly troubling body of water. It is about an eight hour straight from beginning to end and this summer it held boaters up for days, if not a week, from heading north. But today, it was a smooth crossing. Boaters took full advantage of the opportunity. The strait was littered with boats, most going north, and some—like us—heading south.
What a difference a day makes. Yesterday at Lagoon Cove I was hiking with Marlene in a short sleeve shirt and shorts. Today, rain gear all the way. The marina is pretty full, all things considered. Most will leave tomorrow like us to time the rapids. We will be transiting through Dent, Guillard, and Yuculta Rapids in that order. We will depart around 8:00 AM which will place us in position to transit these rapids during slack tide.
We have a dinner reservation tonight at the restaurant which we have dined at before. The restaurant is a friendly atmosphere with good food and great service. We are looking forward to it.
There are two boats here from Newport Beach, CA. Both came all the way up.
We first met the owner of Tortuga, a 90 foot Nordhavn at Stewart Community dock in Big Bay about four years ago. He was the one who introduced us to installing a Starlink on our boat. As you can see he has his old style Intellian system, which was the original satellite system available to boaters, which he refers to as his “useless balls” on the top of his boat. Back in the day these balls cost thousands of dollars to install and then thousands more every month for service, and the performance was terrible. He told us after installing the Starlink system, he would regularly have 2 or 3 hour board zoom calls while en route using the Starlink system and it worked perfectly. Right then and there, we made our decision to put one on our boat.
His friend, “Mad Crab” brought his brand new 68 foot Offshore up from Newport Beach, CA. Beautiful boat with a corresponding beautiful price, somewhere in the neighborhood of four or five million depending on upgrades.
Finally I thought it was only fitting to bring up a picture from three years ago here at Lagoon Cove. Rain gear in tow, she is ready.
