LAGOON
COVE TO BLIND CHANNEL
Thursday,
July 30th
Today was a 6AM off the dock day as we made our way to the Johnstone straits, about an hour and a half, part of the way more slowly as transited a few narrow shallow channels. The Johnstones were not predicted to be whipped up but as I’ve said and experienced before, you just don’t know until you are out there. It was another bluebird day on the water thankfully, barely a wave along the route, so it was quite pleasant – and we got to see more whales! As we approached Blind Channel, a large vessel was approaching on our starboard stern and it turns out it was Popeye! Friends of ours from MBYC, Roger and Karen Orth, travel with the folks that own Popeye, Joel and Julie, every summer and we always look forward to catching up with them! Docking at Blind Channel is rarely without current and today we had quite a strong push OFF the dock in our assigned slip. There was already another boat in the slip on the other side and not a lot of room between our boats, so with meticulous precision and some necessary horsepower, John masterfully got us to the dock without incident, with lines thrown to the waiting arms of 4 of us on the dock! I had taken the whaler into the marina separately so met Huntress at the dock. Abells had the same experience – power and precision to battle the current. Once all tied up we watched Popeye come into the dock. Because they are so large, they have to set two anchors in the channel, then back into their linear dock end tie and secure the lines. The dock isn’t strong enough to hold them without the placement of anchors and I had never seen that process before so it was fascinating to watch. We were wandering about the grounds when someone said "ORCAS coming through!" So off we went back to the boat to watch for the arrival of the Orcas. Unfortunately, there were two whale watching boats tailing them, way too close I might add, which seemed to rush the whales past us rather quickly. It was really sad to watch them being pursued like that, wrong in so many ways, poor creatures. Later we invited Roger/Karen, Joel/Julie over for Happy Hour with the Abells on our boat and had just a delightful visit! Roger and Karen knew both Greg’s and John’s parents, so that was fun reminiscing about their shared times with them. We all went up to the restaurant for dinner which is always killer good, after which Joel and Julie invited us to come visit them on their gorgeous vessel. We so enjoyed their company, and it was a great night overall!
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| Our friend, Roger, shot this nice photo of Huntress on our way into Blind Channel |
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| Orca in the distance, blurry but it was so far away |
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