Our next challenges ahead of us are timing the rapids and favorable seas on Johnstone Strait. It was either an early morning departure, or mid-afternoon departure to time Yaculta and Dent rapids at slack. We’ve accidentally transited these rapids at 4.5kts, and it was exciting. We don’t want these rapids to be exciting, we’d rather them be boring.
It was a stunning afternoon cruise, with very few boats on the water. We failed to take into consideration that it was flooding, or coming against us, so we stepped it up from 1100rpm to 1400rpm for an hour to time our arrival at the rapids at slack. It was 78F and calm water as we transited, no oncoming traffic and only one boat following us through. We anchored in our favorite spot off the government dock in Shoal Bay, with a stunning view up Phillips Arm. It doesn’t get much candier than this!
Our next destination, Blind Channel, was just a short one hour cruise from Shoal Bay. We again had to time the current to reach Blind Channel and it was a mid-morning or late-afternoon arrival. We opted for the morning slack, to take full advantage of our time at Blind Channel. It’s always a treat to have a great German dinner looking out over the marina to East Thurlow Island. Tom was looking forward to a burger, but the lunch shack was not yet open for the season. So we purchased frozen burger patties from the store and for the first time cooked burgers with the air-fryer function on our oven. Now that we’ve discovered our oven has an air-fryer function, and that it cooks meats perfectly, I’m not sure our grill will get much use anymore!
When on the dock, it’s chore time! Tom put sanded and put another couple coats of varnish on the cockpit caprail, Tessa cleaned the Lexan windows on the flybridge and the pilothouse windows, along with spot cleaning the fiberglass hull.
It turned out that there were four Tolly’s at the dock that night. One being docked right next to us, one of the first hulls of the 61. It was a pleasure to run into them, as we always look forward to seeing them every summer.
Must have been all the cleaning that made the weather turn, as we had overcast skies for our 8am departure to shoot Johnstone Strait. And shoot Johnstone we did! Running at our usual 1100rpm we typically make 10kt, we averaged 13.5kt with the current pushing us through Johnstone in 3 hours. One of our fastest transits!
