We upped the anchor at 1250 and headed out of Plumper Bay into the narrows and headed South. Up the channel comes this big tug boat right in our way. I changed course to port and slid past him. We moved into the really narrow part and along comes this 82 foot pleasure boat hell bent to make it through heading North. He was bound and determined to take his half out of the middle. Sorry, that ain't going to happen. He has more maneuverability than we do heading down stream so he had to change course to starboard and go around us. Take that you big bully!!
On we went getting ready for the big tidal streams. We were the only boat that headed through heading South. Earlier in the day, dozens of boats went through heading North. Big and little boats. This time, we were it heading South. On we went with the currents growing. We had avoided going through Seymour on our way North in fear of what their reputation was--a really bad set of rapids. Not any more after this trip. The current grew until we were hitting over 11 knots. Yippee!! We were flying South. We had lots of ground to cover before nightfall and not getting under way for the second part of the trip till 1300 made the 43.5 miles we had to go quite long. Especially if we were only going to be going 6 knots.
On we went till we passed the end of the channel and out into the Straits of Georgia. Our speed slowed but we were still doing well over 6 knots. As we left the South entrance to the channel, we were greeted by dozens of boats all over the place. We were back in civilization again!! People in boats everywhere.
Since it was getting to the dinner hour, Tracy went below and made a great dinner for the two of us. A large hamburger patty with onions and cheese plus mine came with cracked red pepper flakes. As a side dish of cucumbers marinated in vinegar with red onions. A great dinner!!
We finally made it into Henry Bay(49 36.075N 124 50.080W)on Denman Island about 1730 hours. Having started the day at 0500, it was a long day. Especially hard was breaking it into two sections. It's much easier to just get up and go. Stopping and restarting is much harder on the day.
We've now covered 778 miles since we left Juneau and will be South of Nanaimo by the time we drop anchor tomorrow night. Then it is an easy trip through the San Juan Islands and back to PT in just a few days.
Mother Nature is still playing with us. Today's wind--this afternoons forecast was for Northwest winds--were all from the South. Any where from 10 to 20 knots right at Zephyrs bow. I'm not sure we will get to sail Zephyr any time during the rest of this trip. We had to motor all the way to Alaska and it looks like we will be doing the same for the trip back. That's just not fair!! We knew we were going to have to motor up but the sail back was what we had been looking forward too. Oh well, we'll get the sails up someday.
Well, we're up early again tomorrow for a yet to be determined anchorage. We'll know when we get there.
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