Barkley Sound Day 11 – Warm water swimming in Pipestem Inlet

Only one small photo today due to updating via satellite…

Today was a late morning, which is fine, except that we didn’t finish breakfast till about 11am, and then had to negotiate with Morgan over going ashore to explore. She really wanted to find a geocache somewhere (she calls them “games”) similar to what we found in Squirrel Cove last year. Unfortunately, we don’t know where any are, and it appears it’s not appropriate to place them in National Parks, which we happen to be in.

Around that same time the couple from the US boat Ellipsis anchored near us last night dinghy’d over to say hello. They cruise in their trawler Ellipsis out from Poulsbo for a few months each year and Barkley Sound is their favorite. They also said they loved bringing their kids who are now in college so I think they were excited to see a family with the gumption to make it out to W. Vancouver Island, something that is fairly rare. After asking if we had a way to watch movies, they handed us a movie night gift with two movies and some Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. Pretty Awesome! Tonight will probably be Free Willy movie night.

Sanity prevailed and we loaded up in the dinghy and headed out. Today was a longer dinghy ride than usual as we ran out around the East side of Nettle Island to see what we could find. There are two coves on the end that boats can anchor in, and then Reeks Island across from that which we rounded to find a cool little sandy beach with logs and rocks to climb. So we beached the dink and explored for a little while. Some of it was more difficult for the kids due to slippery rocks and apparently spiders are an issue with the kids more than I’d like.

Once we all got sufficiently tired of exploring the beach the girls picked their rocks and a shell to bring home, we pulled the dinghy back out into the water (tide had gone out and left it sitting on the sand) and headed back. The girls LOVE going fast in the dinghy which isn’t all that fast with 5 of us (3 adults included) in it. We powered the dinghy back to our anchorage, and decided it was time to move to a new spot to check out.
Ellipsis also mentioned Lucky Creek which I had already marked on the chart and said it was like the 7 pools of Hana and pretty magical. Magical is also the description from the Waggoner’s guide. So, since everything is only about 1 hour away, we decided to head that direction. Later as we got moving along, we saw Ellipsis on AIS had gone there too.

Once we got to the area, we anchored off the south shore of the Inlet in about 50 feet of water, right in front of a little creek. We checked out an anchorage on the north shore before moving to the south side, but it wasn’t quite as pretty and as we left the cove behind Refuge Island we saw a big black bear on shore. Pretty cool actually. Then, after anchoring, Devon tried to get the Kayak off the deck by herself and lost it so we had to go retrieve it.. By the time I hopped in the dinghy to get it started, Katherine had jumped in and swam to the kayak. And it turned out the water was quite warm, close to 70F actually. So she stayed in the water and Devon and girls got their swimsuits on and jumped in to swim also. It was great! Katherine didn’t want to get out of the water even as the rest of the girls took warm showers and got all dried off.

After that we had dinner, a frozen lasagna we bought in Bamfield that wasn’t super awesome but was still pretty good. Charged up the batteries with the genset while Devon made sandwiches for tomorrow’s excursion, then settled in for another glass of Hard Roe to Hoe 2015 Pinot Noir Rose.

• Anchored in 50 feet of water behind Bazett Island near the mouth of Pipestem Inlet, Barkley Sound, BC • Engine Hours: 1439.7 to 1441.5 = 1.8 hours
• Genset Hours: 637.6 to 639.5 = 1.9 hours
• Water Consumption: 231 = 32gal (a couple showers, dishes, etc) • Watermaker Production: 0
• Water Temp about 70 F
• Air Temp about 70 F
• Barometer 1012.5, bottomed out at 1012.3 and starting to rise again

Posted (slowly) to AndersonsAbroad.com by email via Iridium/Xgate Satellite