Regrouping After 4 weeks of Cruising

Hello and welcome back to another installment of our adventure circumnavigating Vancouver Island on our 37’ sailboat!

Sorry for the delay in this post! Once we got back to the dock, life and responsibilities came crashing down on us! It turns out there’s a lot of things you need to do when you’ve been away for two months.

***Quick real time life update as of this posting****
We are back in Anacortes- I (Mac) am working full time at Northwest Yachts, building a 57’ luxury trawler, and Jenny is working part time as a Pharmacist, and looking for a more full time position in the Anacortes area. We are still working on our youtube videos, but we are bit behind schedule on those…. We will have a video that covers this section of our trip up on youtube sometime in the future…. www.youtube.com/c/cruisingmaya

Ok back to the story!

Our travel during this blogpost is the purple line on the map.

Distance Traveled in this post: 83.9 nautical miles

Distance Traveled from Trip Start: 571 nautical miles

Time duration this blog post covers: 3 days

Amount of time motoring/sailing during this post: 14.7 hours

Total Amount of Fuel Used From Start of Trip: 59.9 gallons

We left off in the last post just as we were going to Port McNeill, after spending 10 days in the Broughtons. 

Port McNeill sits on the North East side of Vancouver Island, and its main industry is logging, fishing, and tourism. The town is small (pop 2000), but centrally located around the water, which makes it great stop for cruising boats, as everything is a short walk from the marina. Port McNeill was the last chance to reprovision the boat before spending the next month in the wilderness.

Upon arriving in Port McNeill, we opted for a dock spot, which gave us easy access to the town’s amenities. A much needed visit to the laundromat was in order…  it had been a month since the last laundy load!

Hello Port McNeill

 In addition to clean clothes, we got a few items from the grocery store, refueled, filled our water tanks, and used the precious internet one last time before shoving off towards our next anchorage, 50 miles North, via a channel that experiences strong tidal movement.

Due to the long passage and tides of the day we were forced to leave Port McNeill at 4AM. While 4AM is quite early to be shoving off from the dock, it does have its merits… mostly due to being able to see the sunrise! We got to witness a stunning sunrise from the water as we continued moving north towards Bull Harbour.

Sunrise enroute to Bull Harbour

Boat nap underway

During our travel day to Bull Harbour, we discovered that the boat’s chartplotter did not have any of the maps for the West Coast! Oh shit! I can’t believe we didn’t check that before leaving! (Quick note for non boaters: you have to purchase different map data for you chartplotter- the previous owner purchased maps for in the inside passage and Washington, but that data did not include the West Coast of Vancouver Island.) It was an interesting feeling seeing our little boat icon driving off the charted map…. Such a stupid mistake. We quickly took stock of our situation- we had one phone aboard with a chartplotting app that we could use for navigation, however if something happened to that phone (like if it went for a swim) we would be left without any sort of electronic navigation, which would be a huge problem for us.

We had a second phone with the chartplotting app, however we had not downloaded the maps for the west side…. Doh! Seriously, how could we have made such a stupid mistake?! The next opportunity for downloading maps over cellular was probably weeks away, which was too much to risk- everything was riding on that single phone with the maps.

After weighing options, we decided to turn around, motor a few hours backwards to where we last had cell service, download the maps onto the second phone, and then continue back North to our intended anchorage. It was brutal backtracking that distance, but we managed to find a sliver of 4G service, which allowed us to download map data on the second phone, giving us the peace of mind of having a backup should anything happen to one of the phones. And what did we learn? Check your frickin’ chartplotter to make sure you have map data!

Ok, so with the chartplotting fiasco behind us, we continued on to Bull Harbour, which is a popular stop for boats waiting for a weather window to round Cape Scott (Vancouver Island’s Northern tip). I should mention at this point that when we were in Port McNeill we got an updated weather forecast which called for a large low pressure system moving in from the North. That weather system gave us two option: stay in Bull Harbour (which was nothing more than a floating dock) for several days, or sneak around Cape Scott just before it hit.

Weighing our options, we decided to try to attempt to round Cape Scott before that system hit.

Hate to do this, but we are gonna leave you hanging…. Join us next time to see if we were able to round the cape before that major weather blows in.

And I realize this post is a little lacking in action…. Don’t worry! Our time on the West Coast of Vancouver Island was epic! Like epic weather, epic fishing, seasickness, wildlife, and much more. Stay tuned for another blogpost in the near distant future.
Thanks for stopping by and hope to see you soon!

Sunrise leaving Bull Harbour to round Cape Scott

See you soon!