It's hard to find more contrast between where we spent last night and where we are spending tonight.
Klaskish Basin, buried in Brooks Bay, is a magical, sheltered oasis, hemmed in by forest and field, populated by the sound of babbling brooks, with deep green cloudy waters beneath, almost phosphorescent in the sunlight. We spent a peaceful night there, finding plenty of space with only three other boats anchored there for the evening. I don't know what's up with the streaky photos I took of the narrow, winding inlet but trust me, it was unstreaked in person. See how green that water is? I'm not making that up and it's not a camera malfunction. It seemed like it glowed as we slid through it at 2 knots.
And check out the vista from the interior... all that green opens into a broad, grassy valley leading up into the forested hills. A fantastic place!
Barter Cove, in the Mission Group of islands, is rolly, buzzing, and windswept. Abandoned homes populate the shores, and small runabouts from nearby Walters Cove zip through and about on their way elsewhere.
It was a rough day getting here, and this is icing on the cake, if the cake were made out of mud and the icing were mouldy worms.
The sailing was still fantastic, lots of wind blasting down from the northwest and fairly flat seas for our rounding of the somewhat formidable Cape Cook. But after that, things went downhill; our furling line jammed and after spending a half hour bouncing around on the bow working on it I finally just had to drop the headsail. Two more slugs on the mainsail broke (the first broke a few days back; I didn't think to mention it but three seems like a bad batch of slugs!) which about puts us out of ready spares (I still have parts to fabricate more from, it's just slow going). Finally, Mandy got stung by a wasp after we dropped anchor. She made dinner and went to bed early, while I decided to take a tepid shower and do the dishes.
Days like this are only to be expected and truth be told it wasn't the worst day ever (heck, it could have been raining) but that doesn't make it any more pleasant. It does make our choices stand out against the alternatives, though; we are rushing a little bit, even after I promised myself I wouldn't, this time because Mandy needs Internet access for work. While the West Coast is hardly the wilderness that the guidebooks portray it, it isn't set up for cruising boats and wireless internet is pretty much nonexistent. There is supposed to be a marina with Internet in Tahsis, though, so we are pushing to get there soon. If things were working out better, I wouldn't be complaining, probably; it's still good sailing and beautiful country. But I would rather have stayed in Klaskish an extra day or cut in to the highly rated Bunsby Islands ten miles north of here than to do what we actually did today, or to end up where we actually have.
This puts us only two days from Tahsis, though, two fairly reasonable days. After that, I can hope for more leisurely cruising again (and to be fair, we aren't exactly pushing crazy hard... thirty miles a day isn't that much, although navigating various rocks and shoals probably adds 25% to the distance made good). I just hope it's worth it.
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