It’s QUIET here!

Sunshine, snow-dappled mountain summits, a long, sandy beach, and shores lined with cedars and hemlocks, green grasses, and golden rockweed–gorgeous! And there is almost no wind! We are in a large cove near Winstanley Island in Shoalwater Pass on the east side of Behm Canal (channel), a fjord that branches north from Revillagigedo Channel as one travels northwest toward Ketchikan. We arrived here this afternoon (Monday, July 11) after motoring for five hours from Foggy Bay, where the high winds gradually lost their howling voices during Sunday night, exited the bay, and took the heaviest rains with them to enjoy a short vacation elsewhere.

We motored beneath low-hanging curtains of cloud and thick mist, which condensed into raindrops from time to time, and needed the cockpit heater and our little electric fan, mounted on the companion way cover, to keep the cockpit windscreens sufficiently free of moisture to give us satisfactory visibility. I toweled off the insides of the windows as needed, as I did when we were motoring back in the cold, damp conditions that we encountered in April and May. There was a little wind out on the open ocean, and current and following swells rocked Braesail from side to side as we peered through the mists at island shores and later, in Behm Canal, at the towering coast mountains to the east in Misty Fjords National Monument Wilderness (a 2.2 million- acre preserve that is part of the Tongass National Forest and is accessible only by boat or float plane). As we rounded the point of Smeaton Island, we could see, about six miles away, New Eddystone Rock, a 230-ft. tower of tree-studded volcanic rock that soars above the sea’s surface and is a famous landmark for those traveling in Behm Canal. It was named by Capt. George Vancouver because of its resemblance to the lighthouse rock off Plymouth in England. To me, the gigantic rock looked like a huge, dark-gray cat sitting straight up and perfectly still on the waterr’s surface, with its tail pointing upward and its ears pricked! I will try to photograph the rock as we are traveling back down Behm Canal in a day or two.

It was wonderful to eat dinner in our sunny cockpit this evening, the clouds and mists having wandered away over the course of the afternoon, and we look forward to a sound sleep with the winds, and Braesail, STILL and peaceful after an “active” weekend!