The winds on Wednesday, August 6th, looked great to sail offshore and around the Brooks Peninsula, a passage reputed to be somewhat rough. With for the beautiful weather we were having it wasn’t bad, but it was the biggest waves we’d ever been in. It’s really hard to estimate wave height but I have to figure that we were in 3-4 meter seas a good portion of the time; often at the bottom of the trough of the wave you’d lose sight of the horizon behind the top of the next wave. My partner got mildly seasick, but I had an amazing time sailing downwind in 15-20 knots for a few hours, until the wind dropped off and we were forced to motorsail to our next anchorage in the Bunsby Group. I chose what one of our cruising guides calls “Green Head Cove” and we dropped anchor at 50°05.6849′ N, 127°33.2296′ W.

There is a building ashore, to the west, that looked like it’s either unfinished, or was going through a refurb that wasn’t completed, but also looked like nobody’s been there in a year or two, at least from the drone pictures. I had wanted to go ashore, but as we took the dinghy in, we saw a sign saying don’t go ashore, as it was property of one of the local First Nations tribes.

So, I just took pictures from the dinghy (and from the drone).

On Friday the 8th, from the Bunsby Group, we motored a few miles into the village of Kyuquot. The entire village is built around a bay, and there isn’t much there. There is a tiny general store at the top of the community dock where docking is free, as long as you can get a slip. We also went to the only restaurant in town, “Java the Hut”, owned oddly enough by a fellow Seattlite. Most of the locals get around by boat, but there is a part-boardwalk, part-trail running around the perimeter of the town as well as splitting off to some beaches on the west side.

After only a night in Kyuquot, we continued down the coast, this time heading for Queen Cove, anchoring at 49°52’59.7″N 126°58’58.6″W near S/V Coquette, owned by our soon-to-be friends Kent and Cathy.

From Queen Cove you can take your dinghy up the Park River during high tides, which we did along with S/V Coquette and S/V Freyja, motoring slowly up the river and then floating quietly back down with the current, talking the entire way. Turns out that Kent mentored the person who did Kestrel’s standing rigging, and he took a quick look around and approved, saying it was done just like he’d taught him!

From there, we motored through the Tahsis Narrows up to Tahsis, where we were greeted upon our entrance to the inlet with 15 knot winds directly in our faces, right up until we arrived in Tahsis, where we were then greeted with the most expensive marina we’d yet encountered, at CAD$3/ft!

One night there was enough, and after getting some basic provisions, we spent two nights at anchor in Bodega Cove (49°44’07.1″N 126°38’16.8″W), ten miles south of Tahsis, with a brief return to get near enough Tahsis for 5G for a telehealth visit before continuing on.