We left Prince Rupert fairly early, but not before all the charter fishing boats that moor in Cow Bay Marina had cleared out. Those early-rising fishermen are hard to beat onto the water. We had seen them processing their clients’ catch on the docks yesterday evening, and salmon seem to be the target of choice right now. Perhaps we’ll do some trolling for silvers as we make our way down the back of Pitt Island.
Today’s trip was good. We had a bit of rough water on Chatham Sound—on one side it’s open to the ocean and on the other you have the mouth of the Skeena River, so lots of things to make the water choppy—but the rest of the voyage was pretty calm. As we travelled west, the clouds slowly cleared. It almost looked summery. We must be heading in the right direction!
Leaving Chatham Sound, we passed a creatively named group of islands—Lawyer Islands with Client Reef and Bribery Islet. One wonders what the story is behind those names. After turning down Ogden Channel, the coastline became even more undeveloped, mostly tree-covered hillsides growing down to a rocky shoreline with no beaches. The rocks are actually very beautiful.
Petrel Channel had some heavy currents when we went through, sadly not in our favor. We were bucking 4-5 mph current the last few miles—it looked and felt more like a river than a channel! We were happy to duck into Newcombe Harbour when we got there.
Sadly, the wind that we were trying to avoid by rushing our transit of Dixon Entrance made its presence known this afternoon and kept us from exploring the bay. We were not comfortable leaving the boat at anchor unattended with the 20-30 mph gusts periodically pushing through. It wasn’t rough, just windy. We had to content ourselves with sitting out on the back deck in the sun during the calmer periods and watching the Bonaparte’s gulls diving for little fish in our cove.
It’s actually prettier than the pictures show. So far the anchor has held great and the wind has died down with the setting sun. Tomorrow we’re heading for an intriguing-looking group of islands and islets tucked in against the middle of Pitt Island. Someone with an interest in trigonometry must have had a hand in naming some of these islands, based on the names we saw: Tangent, Sine, Cosine, Azimuth Islands, and Logarithm Point, to name a few. They are right next to Anger Island and Ire Inlet. I wonder if there’s a connection?
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