Where to and when

Today is our last day in Port McNeill, probably. We're trying not to be rushed, and we'll certainly finish up all our dockside activities today, provisioning, fueling, watering, and so forth. But it's probably not all going to be done in the next two hours, and that puts us in an uncomfortable position with respect to tides... we'll be fighting a current if we leave and head north much later than that.

This is sort of a microcosm of our larger decisions in the next several days. We are, at the moment, in a pretty good weather window for rounding Cape Scott. Winds are supposed to be relatively light through Wednesday. But we would have to make pretty good time to get in a position to be around on Wednesday, and the current situation is almost directly opposite of the weather: the timing of favorable currents is terrible this week, most of them occurring very early or very late in the day.

If we wait for better current times, we're edging into nastier weather forecasts. On the other hand, we're not thrilled at the prospect of making the passage largely in the dark, considering the profusion of rocks along the route, the ever-present procession of dead--heads and other drift that may always be encountered along this coast, and the new and more ominous consideration of heavy tsunami debris which has started to pop up all along the west coast of the Island.

So, we may end up waiting a week, through the icky weather, in dreary anchorages. Or we may push through and get around early, and risk the dark.

Either way, we're certainly pulling out of the marina here in a few hours, so I have to get moving!