We stayed in Granite Bay, 17 miles north of Campbell River last night. There were derelict boats and float houses in the bay, a few ‘summer homes’ (some looking abandoned) on the beach, and what looks like a ‘trailer park’ okay maybe it’s really a campground as there are tents there too. The TP has a small pier and dock, if one can call it that. It looks like about 2 logs wide and several logs long, with a few (and I mean few) boards presumably nailed on the top. Note that the walking deck boards do not go clear across the width of the logs. At the end of this pier, there is a floating dock of sorts, which looks to be about 20 feet by maybe 6 feet. Just big enough for some kayaks and a skiff. Oh it has a nice new Canadian Flag flying on a pole at the end of the dock. I’m thinking the campers placed it there for the duration of their trip. There were 3-5 young kids playing on the dock all evening and then again this morning. There was another ‘dock’ in the bay which was a public dock. It was also in very bad shape. That is except for the nice new metal gangway. This dock had a big sign on it saying ‘Use at your own risk’. Thankfully we did not need to use any of the facilities of this bay.
I woke up very early again, and got up. I took some photos and basically tried to enjoy the early morning quiet. I worked on my paperwork for the upcoming ski patrol convention (the reason we are going home for the next week). When Glen got up we made breakfast and then started picking up and putting things away below deck etc… in preparation for leaving the boat unattended for a week. We didn’t leave the bay until about 11:30am so that we’d reach the Narrows on the right tide.
Sunrise 6:50 am
The day is again a bright sunny warm day. Again I’m asking myself why we aren’t just sitting on the back deck soaking up the warmth. Maybe we’ll have time to sit this afternoon in Campbell River.
Seymour Narrows – We went through the narrows at ¼ tide. The current was running about 8 knots against us and we were traveling at a speed of 7 knots. Our RPM was about the same as when we travel 14 ½ knots. There was a tug and barge ahead of us and the tug did fine but the barge was turned by the current 90 degrees to the tug. You couldn’t even see the tug, but it just kept pulling and eventually got the barge headed the right direction again. We didn’t get spun around too much but it did move us a bit. I went to the stern to try to take some photos and had to sit on a deck chair so that I didn’t fall over. There were whirl pools all around us, not very big but still fun to watch. Glen said that at peak current (2 hours ago) the current through there would have been running 11 ½ knots. This is why he timed our departure this morning to reach the narrows closer to slack. 11 ½ knots would have been very interesting to watch. Not so sure I’d like to try to run through at 11 ½ knots but it would be fun to see.
Jet skiers would like that wall of water!
We got ourselves into our assigned slip in the Coast Marina in Campbell River. This is the smaller marina, but it appears that Magic will be okay for her stay. We are very close the Coast Guard slip, and in fact one of the Coast Guard guys came down the dock to help catch our lines.
My guess is that more locals use this marina as there are lots of smaller boats here. We passed the entrance to the Discovery Marina as we came down the channel, it appears to be quite large and full of large and larger vessels.
I spent quite a bit of time this afternoon working on emails and blog stuff. I did this while Glen was busy outside washing the boat. I would have taken the laptop outside to do my work while enjoying the sunshine but a) it would have been hard to read the screen, and b) Glen likely would have hosed me.
The boat is all clean, so we went out to dinner. Hey, I wouldn’t want to get anything dirty.
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