We did it–again!

Thursday, June 20, 2024

We celebrated the last day of Spring and the first day of Summer by deciding to round Cape Cook on the Brooks Peninsula and the rocky Solander Island not far from it, through waters that strong winds and rough seas can make challenging and dangerous. Martin rowed off to pick up the crab trap very early in the morning, and found that it itself had been trapped beneath the water on some submerged something that might have been old logging equipment. He rowed back to Braesail, and he and Hans motored to the scene and managed to free and retrieve the trap—which was empty. Bummer!

Braesail and her crew motored out of beautiful Julian Cove at about 8:45 am and the large genoa foresail was raised at about 10 am as the strength of the inlet’s outflow wind increased. We sailed, at first slowly down Quatsino Sound, and then increasingly swiftly as we entered the open ocean and wind speeds increased to as high as 35 mph late in the afternoon. Wave heights were about five feet, with the swells rolling by every six or seven seconds, and the waves foamed and hissed and splashed as they tumbled beneath Braesail at an angle, sending her pitching and heeling over and then recovering, as she was designed to do. What an exciting (and a little scary for me!) sail we enjoyed over the course of over some seven hours until the winds died and we started Braesail’s engine near the Bunsby Islands. Hans took the helm for the day, with our autopilot navigating through the energetic waves based on wind direction. Walt and Martin handled the lines as we changed direction, reefed the main and genoa sails (reduced their areas) as wind speed increased, and trimmed the sails for optimal efficiency according to wind and sea conditions. I was a passenger who helped a bit here and there, was a little nervous, and finally became accustomed to the rhythmic heaving and rolling of the boat as it climbed and surfed down the waves.

After 10 hours on the water and about 55 miles traveled, we anchored at about 7 pm as the only vessel in Passage Cove in the Bunsby Islands, another beautiful place whose turquoise waters are ringed by lovely forested shores, many rocks and islets, and grass-and-gravel beaches. Hans and Martin motored around the cove in Coracle after a chicken/pesto/pasta supper eaten in the shade on our aft deck on a very warm evening. They let down our crab trap and returned to Braesail to share cocoa before bed—what an exhilarating day we’d had!