We left Heron docked at the North Vancouver Island logging town of Port McNeill... flew back to Seattle with the boys... flew across Canada to take James to freshman year at St. Lawrence in upstate New York... then flew straight back to Vancouver two days later and caught a plane to the boat. After re-provisioning again we wheeled everything down to the Port McNeill docks, stowed it away, and pushed off that same day to cross Queen Charlotte Strait. It goes without saying, we were exhausted, a little disoriented, and of course -- missing our boys.
Despite all the dire warnings and our nervousness about crossing "the Strait," the wind was blowing only 4.5 knots, the skies cornflower blue, and the water calm. We decided to just go for it. We were motoring up the glassy Strait, lost in our own thoughts, when the silence was suddenly broken by the eruption of a 20-foot waterspout to port, maybe 200 yards from the boat. Then, without warning, a HUGE humpback whale breached-- half its enormous bulk shooting straight out of the water before crashing back down. It sounded like a cannon shot in the middle of all those miles of stillness. There were two whales -- immense animals, and they kept surfacing, their tail flukes waving at us like big steam shovels.
The last few days had been draining, but were were suddenly hooked again and happy to be heading north. We tucked into Skull Cove, a pretty, deserted anchorage on Bramham Island, just west of Seymour Inlet, as dusk was falling. There were no other boats, just a beautiful view to the west and Harlequin ducks tracing arcs through the inky water. It looked like a perfect place to drop a crab pot...
We did, and when Jeff went out to check in the morning, he hauled in 5 hefty Dungenesss cabs. We put a pot of water on to boil before breakfast and had fresh crab for lunch to celebrate the return of our appetites after rounding Cape Caution in 5-6 foot swells later that day. They were our first Dungeness of the trip, and they were delicious!
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