Day 73 – River’s Inlet to Port McNeill

A very early morning as today we are doing our last major crossing, the sometimes (much of the time) surly Cape Caution and Queen Charlotte Straits. We pulled away from the dock at 5AM and motored out into the thick fog and low light. Our early strategy paid off though, as the crossing was completely uneventful….just like we want them to be (thank you Greg Abell once again). Just some lazy large ocean rollers to keep our attention, but nothing violent to contend with. John decided to put on the power while we had the nice water which burns about 3x the amount of fuel but it’s worth it to just get here. Cape Caution can whip up into very ugly conditions very quickly. We arrived in Port McNeill, fed Esperanca another 500 gallons of diesel, and settled into our moorage at the City Dock. Since hippy is so angry, John had to do the provisioning, so he headed up town to the grocery store while I stayed behind and worked on some laundry. He came back with some interesting items and it sounded like he was asking the clerk about almost everything on my list! What a trooper he is. The sun came out this afternoon again and it’s wonderful! We haven’t had enough sun this summer and are looking forward to some heat on these lily white bodies. I have been “boat bound” for so many days that I am willing to sacrifice some pain with hippy and we are going to walk up to the pub at the top of the dock for dinner. “Gus’s Pub” is about what it sounds…pub food but I don’t have to cook! Tomorrow we have a short crossing of the more protected part of the Queen Charlotte Straits as we make our way over to Sullivan Bay and the Broughton Archipelago.