Pearse Islands to Pearl Pass
/We awoke very early to dense fog as predicted. We really don’t care, because Karen and I are both still doing “real work” and given that we still have a cell signal here in the anchorage, we are both on the phone sending and receiving text message and emails.
In between juggling work projects, I made us breakfast: a French Omelet with tomato, sautéed onions and red peppers with a great English cheddar topped with a balsamic glaze drizzle. Karen was happy.
Lots of protein to start the day
Just as we were about to weigh anchor, a nice Tollycraft joined us in the anchorage. I bet they were happy to see us leave. Now they had the place all to themselves.
Clean anchor...almost
When we did get underway, most of the fog had lifted with the occasional blanket still hugging to the coastline here and there. The fishermen are out in force doing their racetrack back and forth along the “hot spots”. Our goal today was to “catch” a whale or two: humpback, Orca or whatever came our way. Blackfish Sound is usually good for spotting these mammals. I guess that why it is named Blackfish, the native American name for Orca.
We did spot four humpback doing their thing, but no Orca. On the commercial whale watching boat channel we heard that most of the activity was in Johnstone Strait around West Cracroft island. Not on our route, so we settled for what we saw. A Dalls porpoise and a few harbor porpoise did round out our mammal spotting for today.
Because it’s the height of summer cruising, Karen is determined to find us anchorages with little or no other boats. That is how Pearl Pass became our destination. Showcased in the Dreamspeaker Guide, it’s ust a little break in the land, choked with kelp on one end, so we should not see much traffic through this “pass”! We set the hook in a spot with great views all around and settled in for the afternoon.
A local fisherman came in to inspect and pull his crab buoy. As it turned out, there were three crab pots on the string, marked by only one buoy. Good lesson learned: give the crab pot buoys an even wider berth when anchoring because you never know where and how many pots are sitting on the bottom ,waiting to tangle with your ground tackle.
Busy checking crab pots
After that excitement, Karen and I both went back to work for the afternoon. We still have three bars of cell coverage and we knew it wouldn’t last later in the trip, so we crammed to get a bunch of loose ends under control for when we lose all connectivity.
The evening was calm, quiet and peaceful. I think we saw one lonely boat go by, but no one joined us in this anchorage.
Fog lifting