August 11 / Day 14
Heavy fog to low overcast, Winds calm increasing
to W @ 15 knots, Seas calm to swells to 1.5 meter with 2-foot windwaves, Seas
rippled
As hard as it was to be facing another day of paddling in fog,
I knew that this was my one weather window to cross Queen Charlotte Strait for
many days to come and I was ready to get back home. The fog seemed even heavier than it had been
for the past two days and those two days had been decidedly un-fun. After thirteen days without rest and two days
of pressing hard to get here to make this crossing I was spent and had to give
myself a pep talk in order to leave the beach.
The wind and seas had been up keeping pleasure cruisers at anchor but,
as forecasted, conditions had subsided and were expected to return
in the afternoon. Fog or no fog it was
time to go.
Everyone knows that the shortest distance between two points
is a straight line so we tend to lay out our courses between those points using
a series of straight lines and shallow angles.
In this case my points were Shelter Bay and Bear Cove which involved a
16 NM whiteout crossing of Queen Charlotte Strait.
My course consisted of three primary legs with negligible
course changes but three significant intermediate crossings. The first approximately 5.3 NM from Shelter
Bay to the Deserter Group, then 2.5-ish NM from The Deserters to Bell Island
and finally 3.5 NM angling across Goletas Channel to Duval Point.
I planned for the ebb to be changing to flood about midway
through the first leg and figured that it should about equal out so I didn’t
change my course legs. If the fog didn’t
clear I would just adjust headings to achieve my desired course-made-good. My GPS was set to display speed, course and
heading, however I would take my heading from the deck compass.
That first 5.3 NM to the Deserters crosses a major shipping
lane and is an enormous tidal passage. I
would be making that crossing in a complete whiteout and thanks to the Raven
that destroyed my antennae I had no radio for alerting shipping traffic of my
whereabouts. At 7:30 AM I left for Port
Hardy on a heading of 180 degrees.
Things got pretty strange from the very beginning as I
struggled to maintain my heading and reconcile it with the constantly changing course. I can hold my focus on the deck compass and
maintain a heading for hours but when I look down at my GPS for the speed and course I get dizzy and it takes a bit for my eyes dial it in. In the meantime, my heading changes, correct, repeat,
repeat, repeat. I was pretty certain
that my course was falling well short of being a straight line.
Several times I heard powered craft making the same
crossing. Only once did the fog and
their close proximity allow me to actually see a boat as it motored past
unaware of my presence. The rest of the
time I listened carefully and tried to located them by sound.
The leg from Shelter Bay to the Deserters should have taken
a little under 2 hours. When my time en
route passed the 3-hour mark it was my second clue that my course was far from
ideal. At that point I gave up worrying
about my course and just paddled a 180-degree heading knowing that whatever the
current did with me I would eventually bump into a shoreline and I would figure
out a course correction at that point.
Gradually the dark grey lightened and my desired waypoint
emerged in the distance. I was on track!
I couldn’t believe it! I didn’t have to stare at my compass for a
while! I couldn’t wait to be done and
give my mind and body a rest from paddling.
The
Deserters
It was another 4 hours from the Deserters to Port Hardy. During that time the fog lifted to form an
overcast and then dissipated altogether giving way to a bright sunny day. The westward flowing ebb that had confounded
me gave way to the flood and a west wind began to build in Goletas Channel
providing a bit of a nudge on the final push.
It wasn’t until I downloaded my GPS track that I realized
how much the current and zero visibility had messed with me. I had turned my 16 NM course into a 17.1 NM
journey.
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