Back so soon?

Back on the Internet, anyway, later the same day we left Port McNeill... well, that was unexpected!

We're in Port Hardy, which is just a few miles up the coast. We had thought we might end up here, but we had anticipated anchoring out, sans Internet access, etc, etc. It was just going to be a quick overnight stop.

But the anchorage here, always marginal, was entirely crowded out with crab pots. We hunted around for a half hour or so trying to find someplace that was secure and where we wouldn't swing into a dock or a pot or a mudflat, but just couldn't get comfortable with anything.

So, we bailed out and got a spot at the Quarterdeck Marina for the night.

As it happens, this works out well, because I also discovered, inadvertently, this afternoon that the chart chip for our Garmin plotter for the "West Coast Vancouver Island" does indeed show the West Coast of Vancouver Island... but in almost no detail. Zoom down as much as you like, no contours appear, and rock and obstacle marks remain large and imprecise.

We use, in practice, a combination of the plotter and our paper charts, which means we have redundancy for the whole route. But this disturbing discovery compels us to double-check our paper chart inventory and ensure that we have all the plans for the various emergency anchorages along the route, and other updated small-scale charts that we might not have otherwise felt necessary.

The marina here has a nice little chandelry with a fairly complete chart catalog. So, come morning, we'll amble on up there and fill in any gaps that we might find going over our itinerary and inventory tonight.