“Always winter, and never Christmas”

…and Mrs. Beaver, from C.S. Lewis’s _The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe_, just might feel at home in this “summer’s” weather on the north coast. We’ve spent the day on the anchor, but moving a lot from the gusts, and from the wind that swirls around the “window” in the shoreline that surrounds us here in Foggy Bay on July 10. Gusts have hit close to 30 kts (remember our time out in Haida Gwaii in Bag Harbour?) and we’ve swung a fair bit, but there hasn’t been any noticeable movement in the anchor. Not that we’d expect much–the bottom is charted as mud, and the wind would have to drag a half mile before we’d bump into anything. We’ve got 160′ of chain out in 40′ of water, and I’d be tempted to bet that the last 10′ of it hasn’t moved since we put it down yesterday.

The normal weather pattern for this part of the world is for a couple of high pressure “patches” to set up residence, one off the Oregon-Washington coast and one in the Gulf of Alaska, and because winds rotate clockwise around a high pressure area, north winds should be sucking air from Hawaii (ok, they are southerlies on that side of the North Pacific High) and blowing nice warm air to the north along the Alaska and BC coasts, and by the time this air gets to the Washington and Oregon coasts, nice cool air from the air conditioning waters off the northern coasts blows inland.

That’s not what is happening this year. We’ve got a 25-30 millibar low plowing up the North Pacific, up the Gulf of Alaska, right through where the NPH is supposed to be, on its way to warm up the western Arctic. It’s going to warm up the Arctic, because it is moving all the warmth that should be developing here along with it. Looking at the lighthouse and buoy reports, it is moving along, just as the models predicted, and sometime tonight, the wind should drop back to something completely useless as we head up Behm Canal toward Misty Fjords tomorrow.

Though it would be shouting into the wind, I would love to read the sections on Moderation from Aristotle’s _Nic. Ethics_ to this weather. 12kts SE would make for gorgeous kite (spinnaker) sailing up the Canal, but, no, the forecast is for 6-8 kts, which just isn’t enough to make our screacher (moderate weight spinnaker sail) sing.