Moving On

We are leaving Port McNeill this morning. We may stop in Port Hardy tomorrow as we wait for favorable winds for the next few days to get us across the Queen Charlotte Strait and around Cape Caution, but our next planned stop is Bella Bella 165 miles away. We bought $300 worth of food, much of it we are hoping will last until we get to Prince Rupert, 370 miles north of here. There are a number of resorts and semi-abandoned communities along the way, but no other real towns with phones and Internet. There will, however, be a lot of fisherman, sailors, and cruisers on mega yachts, based on the traffic we have seen heading North.

After the NW gales on Johnstone Strait we feel like our fate is pretty much up to the wind gods. We’ll just have to take what we get. We may get stuck for days waiting for a change in the winds, or we may be able to paddle straight through. It should take somewhere between 10 and 16 days to get to Bella Bella.

We haven’t been posting videos because the mini-laptop we are carrying doesn’t have enough power to view and edit high definition videos, but I uploaded one to YouTube so people can see what it is like sailing against the wind. This is a short clip I took while beating across Johnstone Strait south of Telegraph Cove. It was a beautiful day, but it would have been more fun sailing if we weren’t trying to get somewhere for the night.