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.
