Big Bay to Port Neville

Less rain today, but still dreary in the morning. We had our anchor chain foul while pulling up in the morning and thought we were in for trouble. It was a shallow anchorage but way too cold for Alden to want to go swimming. With a bit of trickery and maneuvering we zigged and zagged, tugging from different directions and managed to untangle our problem. We left the bay with a good dose of relief. Water was still rough in the Johnstone Strait, westerlies were blowing and waves had us rocking. This was our longest stretch in the strait, but thankfully still only a few miles long. We ducked out of the tumultuous water and into Havannah Channel. Further along we anchored in Hadley Bay to wait for slack tide through Chatham Channel. It will be with some relief that we leave this stretch of the trip that has been packed full of rapids and given us plenty of practice in planning around tides and currents. We reached our destination around 2:30. Kwatsi Bay was beautiful with steep hillsides that disappeared into the clouds. Eagles and auklets surveyed the water for fishing. Dozens of small waterfalls cascaded down the steep rock walls, well fed from all the rain. We put out a crab trap and Alden grabbed his fishing pole and headed for the bow. We spent the afternoon with little projects like these, I returned to my enduring task of recovering all our outdoor cushions. Alden caught a little rock fish, far too small to bother filleting. We were about as confused as the poor fish when it first popped up into sight. It came up looking like it had already given up the fight. We managed to get it close to the swim step at the back of the boat and together we unhooked it and admired it sitting in my hand until it worked up the gumption to swim off. We decided to explore and I rowed the dinghy around the bay while Alden tried to catch things. He nearly enticed a couple crabs into the raft but they bailed at the last minute. We did manage to catch some mussels for bait! Two seals swam around and kept popping up to spy on us. After tooling around the bay we rowed back to check our crab pot. Empty. Hot dogs for dinner!