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 Yesterday Kay and I made the trip from Port Ludlow to Lake Union uneventfully. The 2023 Quijote summer cruise has come to an end. Quijote crew are sleeping in their own beds once again. What a fantastic trip it has been.

After a rocky start in Silva bay, we finally made our way to Princess Louise Inlet, only to be thwarted by more foul weather. So… we didn’t get to spend as much time in PLI, or in Desolation Sound as we had hoped but otherwise, the trip was an unqualified success. We enjoyed exceptionally fine weather in the Broken Group with gorgeous solitary anchorages. 

I have Quijote crew to thank for our success.  It was six weeks of exploration, stunning scenery, solitude, adventure, friendship, fun, and good eating. Honestly, the trip could not have gone better.

I can’t thank my Quijote brethren enough. To a person you were all so easy to get along with, always ready to step in and do whatever was needed to help make Quijote operate smoothly. In order of appearance, my heartfelt, thanks go out to Chuck, Tina, Sapna, MaryLou, Knute, and Kay. Thank you, thank you. I could not have done it without all of you. You are all veteran Quijote cruisers who have learned a thing or two about pressure cooker cooking along the way.

Thanks also to our loyal followers. It has been a treat updating this blog on an almost daily basis to keep Quijote fans in the loop on our whereabouts and activities.

Until next year…

Bye bye ML&K

Kay and I are all that remain of the 2023 cruise, it’s sad to say. MaryLou and Knute took their standup boards and drove home from Port Angeles. 

Kay and I will exit the scene tomorrow morning, headed for our last night out, an anchor in Port Ludlow. 

We gave Quijote a good scrub this afternoon. Then scrubbed ourselves, the first time since Campbell River three weeks ago. Well, the first with unlimited water. 

Fish, chips and chowder for dinner tonight and a nice long walk to get there. It was just what we needed

Port Ludlow tomorrow, Seattle on Tuesday. 

No Canada!

Our last night in Canada. It’s been great.

We didn’t see as much wind today as was forecast by the weather report, but we did enjoy enough to sail. We were even able to shut down the engine for a couple hours. That cut our speed from 6 to 3, but we had some time to kill, so we plodded along at 3 for a while. It was such a beautiful day to be sailing. 

Then when we arrived at the anchorage it started blowing harder of course. 

We’re anchored in Campbell Cove within Becher Bay. It’s across the Strait of Juan de Fuca from Port Angels. It’s a fairly shallow anchorage. There’s a marina in closer to shore, but no larger sailboats. 

I’ve never been in this anchorage before. Nor have I been into Port Angels Harbor. We’ll need to check in with US Customs in Port Angeles. 

The wind is blowing hard enough to discourage us from going the short distance it would take to explore a nearby provincial park with trails. Maybe later. 

MaryLou us busy concocting something for dinner as I write. I have no idea what’s cooking, but is smells delish. 

Out of Barkley

Today was pretty much as advertised. It never really got calm, but it got easier as the day wore on

We pulled the anchor up at at 5 am and lashed it to the bow rollers. That keeps the anchor from moving around when impacted by a wave. 

The wind kept us from going ashore this afternoon .  We’ll get off in Port Angels in two days. 

Tonight we had leftovers. We have a lot of food to eat up in a few days time. 

I expect us to sail downwind tomorrow, probably under main with preventer. We won’t burn much fuel or do much battery charging.

Tomorrow will be our last night in Canada  on this trip. 

Exit Strategy

Sea stacks at the end of the Wouwer Island hike

This is our last night in the Broken Group, the last night in Barkley Sound.  It has been a memorable couple of weeks. Memorable for the scenery, the remoteness, the fair weather, and the friendship. 

We’re in Effingham Bay for our final night.  The crew is busy on deck readying the inflatable armada. We have five inflatable vessels for four people. Granted that includes one we hope never to have to use. Still, it felt a little excessive this afternoon while going to shore in formation. Three of us on paddle boards, one in the dinghy.

Effingham Bay is large. There’s 

swinging room for twenty or more boats. There’s a nice, well marked, (relatively) well groomed (primitive) trail on the island. The trail head is at the head of the bay.

MaryLou made yummy soup for dinner tonight, another excellent Instant Pot recipe that cooks up well in a pressure cooker. Kay is baking cookies. 😋

We’ll get an early start tomorrow. The earlier the better if the tide tables are accurate. Earlier is normally smoother as well.  We’re likely to see 10 kt headwinds early, then calm in the middle of the day, and finally a 10 kt tail wind to push us into Port San Juan. Which is to say the day should get easier as it proceeds. 

Island Hopping

 

Once apon a time, there was a hotel on Clarke Island… 

We’re shallower in our Wouwer Island anchorage than we have been at any other anchorage. The low tide will be quite low too. Together they portend very little wiggle room around 9 am tomorrow. Our current 24 feet of depth will become 14 feet. The bottom of the keel is 6.3 feet below the waterline. That will leave Quijote 7.7 feet of depth between the keel and the bottom. Which is 7.7 feet more water than we need, but only if the diminishing depth doesn’t extend the anchor chain and put us into shallower water. Another sailboat was in the same anchorage when we arrived and has since departed. On his way out he yelled over to warn us that it will be shallow tonight. That was nice of him. 

Modern boat lifts have foot wide straps that hang eight feet or so into the water.  They’re deep enough to allow a sailboat to maneuver over them and be lifted out of the water and rolled into a boat yard for maintenance of the hull etc. It wasn’t long ago that ships would accomplish the same thing by maneuvering into a shallow bay and waiting for the tide to go out. As it did, the ship would settle down onto blocks designed to keep it from tipping over.  There are still places that do it this way, but it’s not as common as it once was. It must be a lot of work keeping barnacles from taking over all the underwater parts of the system.

It was my turn to make dinner tonight. Hamburger Pie. More like a casserole than a pie, but quite tasty no matter what you want to call it. It was shepherds pie like. The recipe called for putting it in a casserole and baking it it for 15-20 minutes, but that was just to melt the cheese that goes on top, so rather than burn that much propane,I heated it in a frying pan with a lid on top and that melted the top layer of cheese nicely. 

Spruce

Tuesday. This must be Clarke. Another idyllic anchorage, another gorgeous day. Is it always this nice? I suppose it is summer, so statistically it should be sunny a significant chunk of the time, but all of the time? We’ve been pretty lucky since our departure from Victoria. 

A friend who kayaks in this area every summer recommended a trail over Turret Island, last night’s anchorage. 

It took us a few tries, but we did find it. A short, well beaten path to a huge Sitka Spruce. Kay was the one who found the path last night at high tide, when it was easy to get to. By the time she returned to Quijote with news of her find, it was late enough to make me decide to wait until this morning to go look for it. 

The problem with my decision is that the morning brought low tide. A very low tide. A negative tide.

So there I was, rowing toward the mud flats at the head of the bay, eel grass tangling the oars. This did not look good. The dinghy came to a rest in the mud. I was only twenty feet from rocks that would take me away from the shore, but from there, I would need to cross another expanse of tidal mud. There was nothing for it but to remove my shoes and slog.

The shoes came off and I sunk to my ankles in the mud. It’s a delicious feeling, mud squeezing between the toes. Unfortunately there is a lot more than mud to walk across at low tide. Shells, barnacles sea slugs, sea weed, God only knows what.

So shoes need to go back on, and the flats needed to be crossed carefully to keep the shoes from being sunk and sullied. But how to clean the feet without clean water? I decided it was more important to keep the insides of my shoes clean than to keep the insides of my socks clean. I pulled the socks over my muddy feet and slipped them into the shoes. 

Then I tip toed across the tidal mud from rock to shell and across a gravel section that made the going easier. I finally clambered up into the trees and found the path. Thank God.  It would have been discouraging to go through all that and not find the path I was looking for. 

The woods were cool and lovely, the trail was well worn. A hundred yards in it came to an end at the site of a huge old growth tree. A spruce, gnarled with age. 

I didn’t want to stay long with the tide coming in on the dinghy, so I reversed my course and returned to the boat, where I went after shoes and dinghy with brush and sponge respectfully

I took note of the coordinates, so in the future it will be easier to find the path. 

48°53’59"N 125°20’30”W. 

We’re at Clarke Island tonight. From a sandy white beach, a trail apparently leads to the far side of the island. We’ll see about that. 

Magic

Three nights remain in Barkley Sound after tonight. We're in a cove on the west side of Turret Island tonight. Tomorrow we'll anchor at Clarke Island, then Wouwer Island and finally Effingham on our last night.

It was a dinner of leftovers tonight. No one meal had enough leftover for four people, but we had four different leftover meals, each ample for one or two people. Perfect.

While we were seated around the cockpit table eating dinner under a clear sky with the sun setting over the horizon and the boat anchored in a spectacular cove, the kind that dreams are made of, we had to wonder: why are we the only sailboat out here? This us our ninth night in this Sound and last night was the only one so far that has had other boats in it.

It's early season for this area, so I didn't expect the kind of crowded anchorages one sees in the San Juan Islands in July, but neither did I expect to find no other boats in anchorage after anchorage.

As a cruising ground this place is magical.

Joe

We're in Joe's Bay tonight. It's a large area with excellent protection from wind and waves and enough swinging room for forty boats. When we arrived there was only one other boat. There are eight or so out there now. I wonder who Joe was.

The islands and anchorages in the Broken group are packed pretty tightly. We rarely need to travel further than five miles. Today we shook out the sails. It was a beautiful, sunny day, but the wind was light. We took advantage of what there was, made a couple of tacks, then gave up and headed for the anchorage.

I pulled up my itinerary for the last time I was here. We anchored in most of the same anchorages. We have a few extra nights this time, resulting in three new anchorages.

The crew took off this afternoon on all three paddle boards. I'll probably toodle about in the morning on a board.

The weather for the next couple of days is forecast for light wind and sunshine. That works. MaryLou whipped up pressure cooker lasagna tonight. It's the first time we've tried the recipe. It was quite good. A keeper!

Ringed by Rocks

It's blowing in the twenties today. Since moving from one anchorage to the next involves carefully extricating ourselves from among a so called "Ring of Rocks," (the guidebook's name for this anchorage) and steering through another group of rocks to get into our destination anchorage, we've decided to hang tight and wait for the wind to quit pushing us around before we do that maneuvering.

We woke this morning to dead calm and partly cloudy, so we had our chance to get out of here, but we chose to paddle around Hand Island instead.

But, while strong wind makes paddling a challenge this afternoon, it makes power generation a breeze, so to speak. The solar panels and wind generator are working hard, even if the crew is passed out, writing blogs or reading books.

Tomorrow is forecasted to be calmer. We'll head for Joe's Bay earlier in the day with a better forecast.

I'm on the hook for dinner tonight. Pasta in a mushroom marinara sauce, mushrooms, bell peppers, and spicy sausage. I'd have waited until later in the trip to make this meal, but we're uncomfortable giving the mushrooms any more time to turn. They're getting slimy.

Mastless in Barkley

So far we've been impressed by how few boats we've seen in Barkley Sound. We've been anchoring on the outskirts of the Broken Group, but we're still amazed that we haven't had to share space with another boat yet. Compare that with Desolation Sound, the San Juan or Gulf Islands. Those destinations are over-run with boats at this time of year

Tomorrow that will probably change. We're headed to Joe's Bay at the heart of the Broken Group. One kayaker Knute talked to said Joes was full of sailboats last week, an event put on by some Canadian club apparently.

Another discovery about these islands is that the cellular signal is better than I dared hope for. The signal is better than it is in Victoria Harbour for some reason.

There's a good reason why we're not seeing many sailboats. It's still early season weather wise. The wind has been blowing hard down the Strait of Juan de Fuca, making it difficult to get here comfortably. Later in the season the winds will abate and circumnavigators will be coming south down the coast as we did in 2017. This place will be bristling with masts and motor vessels in a few weeks. By then we'll be gone.

One boat we do see a lot of are kayakers. They're thick in these parts, flowing out of Ucluelet and Bamfield for a few days or a week.