Saturday July 19, 2008

We pulled an all nighter. It wasn’t pretty but we crossed another open ocean and one of our eight Cape’s. This one was called Cape Caution. The thing about boating is that you really have to take advantage of weather windows or risk sitting in an anchorage for days (or weeks). Recall Jim and the boys getting stuck Fort Bragg, CA.

The decision was made about 7pm to “go for it”. “Go for it” means travel in the dark of the night using only instrumentation for navigation. We were traveling down a strait with all kinds of boat traffic (going both directions) headed toward the open ocean. Note: Everything out there was bigger than us. Fishing vessels, Barges, one luxury liner etc...

Around 9pm Lara went to bed to try to “sleep load”. She just wasn’t tired so at 11:30pm she went on watch (and Jim went to bed – the first time).

We can now confirm that it does in fact get dark from 11:30pm ish to about 4:30am.

At 12:30 am, Lara throttled back (in a head on with a fishing vessel) which immediately levitated Jim off the bed and up the stairs yelling, “What!? What?!” We then had a discussion on passing rules and rights of way, “Red to Red unless ” which Lara apparently violated in her head to head with the fishing vessel. Pumped with adrenaline, Jim went back down to bed.

At 1:30 am, Lara woke Jim up because of the density of traffic and a narrowing of the available lanes. A barge was coming toward us on the right/front, we had just passed a barge, and something big was coming up from behind us (a cruise ship?). While Jim can apparently do this kind of driving with “one eye closed” (according to him) he cannot do it with two eyes closed – Lara was willing to try him on it. Lara is far less experienced with everything and needed his reassurances. Pumped with adrenaline, Jim attempted to go back to sleep on the but this time on the 5’ long pilot house bench (right behind Lara at the helm).

At 3:30 am, Lara woke Jim up to discuss throttling back the boat (which would have woken him up anyway) to cross behind a very large ship and altering course. Jim reset the waypoint daisy-chain route which Lara could not figure out how to use when she was constantly altering course due to traffic (kept it on auto instead of navigate). The dots are other boats: OK - this was not at 0330 but it gives you an idea of what it is like to navigate by electronics.
At 5:00 am, the sun was coming up and traffic had died down and we were headed into open ocean. Jim headed downstairs for some real sleep while Lara had first breakfast.

At 7:00 am, Jim took the helm and Lara slept peacefully until 1pm.

We are still in what is considered northern British Columbia. We anchored at Knox Bay (north of Seymour Narrows).