Day 74 – Port McNeill to Sullivan Bay

John spent the morning washing the boat as it hasn’t had a good bath for weeks. I spent the morning trying to arrange for flights for him to get home with me on August 6^th. All the seaplane seats are sold out on Kenmore and NW Seaplanes so we had to go with airplanes with landing gear and wheels. I was finally able to get him flights on a small Beechcraft commuter plane out of Campbell River, with a stopover in Comox, to Vancouver International Airport where he will catch a flight on Alaska Airlines home. Both flights are less than an hour long. We ended up leaving Port McNeill about noonish and slowly motored across the Queen Charlotte Sound, which was foggy but flat calm. No whale sightings until we got to the other side in Wells Passage where there are frequently humpbacks feeding at the entrance. We arrived at Sullivan Bay around 3:30 and signed up for dinner that evening at the restaurant, which only serves dinner M-W-F by reservation only – another day without cooking! That evening we were paired up at a 4-top with a couple also from the Seattle area that we really enjoyed, in fact for me it was one of those rare meetings when I said to myself “she and I could be good friends in no time” – really liked them a lot. So for you SYC members, look out for them and make them feel welcome as they just joined SYC – their names are Ron and Laura Orr and their boat name is ORENDA. Super nice people. Lastly, before I sign off today, I have to write about one more book recommendation “ENDURANCE” which is the true story of the 1914 fated voyage of Ernest Shackleton & 27 others to the Antarctic aboard the “Endurance”. Although the reader knows from the outset that they were in fact eventually rescued, the book is a page turner as the saga unfolds from the time the ship becomes hopelessly locked in the ice flow, to when the have to abandon the ship and try to rescue themselves while camping on and traveling across the ice pack. This is back when radios were fairly new and not used much so they had no way of communicating their fate to anyone, so nobody knew they were shipwrecked. My description is probably not doing it justice but trust me it is a riveting story and I could not put it down. What they accomplished and the conditions they endured, including successfully sailing a 22’ wooden lifeboat across the Drake Passage, one of the most feared bodies of water in the world where waves can reach 100’ high, is simply astounding. So read it!