August 15, 2021

Another 6am departure. That should be fury enough when we’re supposed to be on vacation!

The original plan was to spend the day relaxing and checking out Bella Bella. But that was thrown out the window when we looked at the weather reports for the upcoming week. Basically, the report said if we didn’t travel around Cape Caution on Sunday it was not going to happen for the foreseeable future – as in the projected forecast of 5 days did not show any weather windows after Sunday. The trip down from Bella Bella was relatively uneventful in the beginning. Then as we traveled down the Fitz Hugh Sound the wind and waves started picking up. When we poked our nose around the tip of Calvert Island it was pretty clear it was not going to happen. We were direct into the waves, and it was not going to be a fun 4 hours if we continued on.

We turned the boats around and pulled into Fury Cove on Penrose. It’s a nice large cove and filled up with a lot of boats, big and small, over the afternoon.

August 16, 2021

We awoke to most of the boats in Fury Cove departing. What did they know about the weather that we didn’t? After coffee and getting the new wind model downloaded, we decided to poke our heads out and see what the situation really was. The waves were better than Sunday afternoon, so we decided to press on. The model when we left said less than 3-foot waves and it may have been for a while. However, I suspect we were in 6- to 8-foot waves for about half of the crossing around Cape Caution. Why do I think that? Because when we were dipping down between swells the bow and sides of the boat were below the top of the wave. The good part is the wave period was still good (spread out) and we just had to suffer the rolling and the uncomfortability of it all.

I’d say we made it through pretty well. Tonia was a bit woozy from the day, but overall, we didn’t seem to have any major problems. We traveled around 10-12 knots for the crossing so burned about twice as much fuel. But hey, we can stop at the fuel dock this time thru Canada so there isn’t a reason to conserve other than the pocketbook.

We settled in on the Port Hardy public dock in the outer harbor. Not a perfect dock as it’s somewhat out in the open. It is totally empty because of that but it’s very close to town so it’s what we’re staying with. After today we can definitely sleep through a bit of wind and a little bouncing on the dock.