Our second Open Ocean segment was this morning, and they say to try not to transit on the peak big ebb tide as Finlayson Channel empties out into Milbanke Sound. Well, you guessed it, we were transiting on the peak big ebb. The wind was supposed to pick up at 10am, so Tessa wanted to be tucked into Finlayson Channel before that.
7:15am departure, and it was already warm. We had 4ft large rollers on our port side, the stabilizers again earned their keep. As we entered Finlayson Channel it was a land mine of logs. With the big tides, all the debris had washed off the beach. We had to slow down multiple times to pick our way through the minefield. But the water was glass and these unchartered (for us) waters were gorgeous. And it was only a down payment on what to come.
We surprisingly passed another First Nation Village in Katsoo Bay, we had taken the “fun” way on the inside of the island. We know knew why the BC ferries had a route in this narrow passage. We also lucked out that there was a cell tower at the village.
12:15pm we had come upon Khutze Inlet, where Tessa had us anchoring for the night. It was just absolutely stunning, but Tom wasn’t thrilled with the protection from Princess Royal Channel. It was also midday, we were feeling good, and the weather was amicable for more running. So we pointed the boat North.
The cruise up Princess Royal Channel was absolutely stunning. The channel had stunning mountains and waterfalls everywhere you looked. The beauty was overwhelming, and we definitely want to re-visit this area when the US – Canadian border opens to non-essential travel.
Some waterfalls were narrow and ran from the top of the mountain to the channel, others were wide and short like the one pictured.
As we exited Princess Royal Channel, we entered Wright Sound – which also was truly beautiful.
Tessa was at the helm as we were approaching narrow Grenville Channel. She heard a change in the main engines, and saw the rpms falling without touching the microcommanders. She quickly called Tom up to the helm for him to see what was happening. She also quickly did some math: ten hours yesterday and eight hours today at 15-1600 rpms drawing from the Aft fuel tank. We had sucked it dry. Tom ran down to the engine room to switch over to draw from the port and starboard fuel tanks, and the engines were happy again. He dipped the aft fuel tank, and we had one inch- equivalent to 17.25 gallons.
We weren’t happy about draining the aft fuel tank, and as we haven’t made the transit from Prince Rupert to Ketchikan before we would stop in tomorrow to put fuel in the aft tank – just for safety.
It also paid to check on the fishboat once in awhile, as the views aft were stunning.
The wind over current made narrow Grenville Channel “ok” in our boat, but it definitely would not be in a smaller boat. We had the doors to the pilothouse open, as it was a warm breeze. We passed the BC ferry just North of the narrowest portion of the channel. We put our “sailor hat” on once again going North past Klewnuggit Marine Park to go South, hoping to spend as little time as needed in the lump barreling down the channel.
Klewnuggit Marine Park is a little ways off Grenville Channel, most boaters choose Khutze, Lowes or Kumealon Inlet as they are directly off Grenville Channel. We wanted to be a little further along but not as far as Kumealon with the wind over current picking up, and Klewnuggit looked like an ideal anchorage.
Well, it turned out to be a spectacularly stunning anchorage. It is definitely worth the small diversion off Grenville Channel to spend the night.
