With a long day to Bella Bella ahead of us, we almost cancelled the shore party to hit the road this morning. Thankfully we didn’t as we had a good explore up the river of James Bay with a lot of bear evidence all around. Day beds, dug up roots, scat and another Kitasoo Xai’xais bear research hair snare. Eagles, salmon, ravens. No bears, but we soaked up the feeling of being in their place.
Pulled anchor and a couple of huge crabs and made our way south. Fairly uneventful until the wind picked up. We were excited at first – it seemed like a decent wind to sail. But it quickly built into unpredictable gusts from all directions. Managed to get the main up and reefed, but then it was getting too hard to follow and we were getting close to the narrows. Then we heard a relayed mayday from Prince Rupert coast guard for someone just outside where we were. Turned out to be a false call on DSC radio. Environment Canada issued an updated weather report shortly afterwards. Gale warnings all the way up the coast. We got Nordri all prepared for 2m swells, but thankfully came around the corner to find some mildly confused chop.
Coming into Bella Bella we passed by the Seaspan Commodore tug – the very one Scott had designed a emergency boat davit/crane for just last year!
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