The Broughton Archipelago....<3

July 10, 2024

Cruisers are asked to fly the flag of their home nation at the back of their boat, and a courtesy flag for the county they are visiting on the lower spreader at the mast. Below the Canadian flag we are flying our sailing club flag.

I can hardly believe how far we have come. On the map, Olympia, where we started is in the lower corner, below Seattle. Now we are at the red circle near the top. If any of you follow our location on marinetraffic.com just know it does not update as often as expected so don’t worry if you see us not making progress. Sometimes it will say we are a certain place when we really left or passed there days before.  If you want to find us our MMSI number is #368268110.

We have slowly been making our way to the Broughton Archipelago and we are finally here. We will spend a few weeks in this magical place then turn around and start making our way south, visiting all new locations. This is wild country, I tell you. Right now we are in a bay that is very protected from the NW winds, but we are having gusts over 20kts. We have been in winds worse than that before, and totally trust our anchor and chain, but the noise is a little disconcerting. It feels wilder, more dangerous. Also, we are anchored off Crease Island, which, like several islands in the area, are seeing a lot more grizzly bears than normal. We get the bear spray we ordered on Friday.

We may have peaked early in our wildlife sightings. Within a period of two weeks we saw Orcas, lots of humpback whales, and a swimming bear. Also, I didn’t tell you about the humpbacks breaching near us. No pictures, it all happened too fast. However, in the last few days we haven’t seen a thing. We know people who boat here often and have never seen what we have, so maybe we are done?  I hope not. 

July 12, 2024

After seeing two humpbacks today I guess we didn’t peak too early on large wildlife sightings. Plus, the day is still young and we are anchored in the most idyllic place called Sprout Island Cove, on Hardy Island, which lies on Blackfish Sound. Blackfish is a native word for Orca. You can imagine we are keeping our eyes peeled.  Sometimes the smaller animal sightings can be fun too. Yesterday, anchored in Dead Cove, off Dead Point, just passed Caution Cove and Caution Rock, in Beware Passage (are they trying to scare us?)  we watched two bald eagles swoop next to our boat to grab the fish we were watching. Then a while later, after some exploring in the dinghy, and dropping our crab pot, we slowly headed back to the boat to see a weasel swim right up to it, climb onto the swim platform, then start looking to see how to get in. It would not have taken him more than 5 seconds to figure it out, so we gassed it and scared him off before we had an incident. He was so cute, but we had left a bag of garbage on the deck, and the boat was open.  Now we know.

Monk’s wall, not built by monks. Morning anchor salad. Two boats that didn’t beware or use caution.

July 13, 2024 

I about cried, ok I teared up a bit, when we docked in Port McNeill today. I can hardly believe how far we have come. We have gone a very long way, learned so much, loved pretty much every minute, and can’t wait for more. We will stay here for two nights, do some laundry and grocery shopping, top off the water and fuel tanks, go to church tomorrow, then head out again on Monday.

We dropped by the whale research center in Port McNeil today and were able to identify the whale we saw last week. The one that came right out from under out boat and scared us to death. Her name is Sparrow and she is 8 years old. Sparrow – thanks for the great memory.

We had not dropped our crab pot because we kept forgetting to buy bait. But, we had some hot dogs ready to expire and thought we may as well give it a try. We loaded up the dinghy to get to a good place then dropped the pot. When we came back later - nothing. As we headed back to Endeavor we decided to just drop it near the boat and see what might happen. We left it overnight and guess what? Two crabs. One too small to keep and the other one a perfectly sized male that we could keep. He was delicious. I think we will try to get real bait and see what happens. We also started fishing. Hopefully it will pay off soon.

Poor Endeavor. In the PacNW it does not take long to let yourself go. After her bottom being cleaned about 2 months ago, she already has some areas with about 5inches of growth. It looks unsightly, but it also slows us down. Here is George scrapping off her green beard.