It’s Wednesday, July 13 and we’re in a little cove on the north side of Hanson Island.  It’s only know as a “cove behind Spout Islet”.  It’s just to the east of Double Bay.  We will stay here today and tomorrow then jump to Port McNeiil where we have a reservation to stay at the marina on Friday.  As with most places up here the concept of marina is pretty basic.  They are mostly not much more than a single dock, but Port McNeiil actually has a couple docks and stores, a ferry, laundry, etc.  In other words civilization.  We haven’t been close to real civilization for a few weeks now, so it will be a nice change.

Importantly it’s a chance to resupply before heading further north.  This is likely the last place where we can do serious provisioning.  After this it’s “catch as catch can” which means there are a few places that you can get a few goods that come in by seaplane.  If you’re there when the seaplane lands you might get some fresh stuff, but if not…

Also from Port McNeiil I think we’ll take a ferry to Alert Bay where there is supposed to be an excellent First Nation museum/art that would otherwise be a pain to anchor/dock.  So, we’ll be at Port McNeiil enjoying civilization for a few days for the last time for a while – maybe a month or so.

Getting here today was interesting.  Another one of those tiny passes.  From Goat Island we went down Indian Channel (south and mostly west) to a pass called White Beach Passage.  If you look on the chart you can hardly tell there’s room to get through.  But we’ve learned to slow waaay down and watch the depth and stay in the middle and we can get through which is what we did.  It’s a little hair-raising though.  Once through it was an easy romp across Blackfish Sound to our little cove on Hanson Island.

A bonus – once we anchored Ann heard the distinct sound of a whale exhale and sure enough, there were whales swimming by our cove.  Fun to watch.  Then with a nice day of warm sunshine.  We took advantage of the good weather and paddle boarded around the cove.

So we decided to skip the First Nation ruins upon reading, “…there is a fee to accessing the village…”  We’d rather “discover” something instead of pay to see a fallen totem – which is apparently all there is to see.

So, instead we diverted to Goat Island.  There’re no goats, just a tiny island with one tree on it.  We anchored in a sweet little cove a hundred or so yards away and dinghied over to “claim” the island for Charisma (which means I peed on it).  Anyway, a fun little trip and the anchorage was stunning.  Very “tucked in”.  Good thing since once we got there it rained for two days.  We collected a bunch of water for the tank (10 gallons!), and got a lot of reading done, but not much else.  Tried some crabbing, but no joy, so just enjoyed the solitude.