Nice soft continuous rain from early morning to around nine. Then it cleared up but was cloudy all day. I went to explore the ruins of Deweyville this morning. The Suzuki outboard is humming along nicely now and is a happy starter. I couldn’t find the ruins, I found a couple of old sheds but they had plywood in the construction and I don’t think Dewey had access to plywood. I looked for young undergrowth and other sign of a town. After fifteen minutes, being nice and wet by this time, I decided that I wasn’t really interested in seeing the ruins anyway. I have seen plenty of ruins before and even sailed on a couple.
When time came to depart the anchorage I had trouble getting the anchor up. It was fouled on something pretty solid. After a combination of heaving and motoring ahead and astern I managed to get the anchor up to the surface and found it was fouled with a heavy steel cable. I got a line around the cable, hung it off and freed the anchor. The cable is now back on the seabed waiting to catch some other unfortunate sailor. That was my morning workout.
From Deweyville we headed around El Capitan Island to visit the small Indian village of Tokeen. When we arrived dock space was pretty tight so we carried on, it didn’t look very interesting anyway.
This detour to visit Token meant we had to use Skookumchuck pass to get back on our route south. On entering the pass a large whale blew right in front of the boat. I stopped the engine and drifted with the current through the pass. For the next hour I was treated to a whale show with at least four humpbacks, one blew very close astern, a great explosive exhalation and plume of fine spray.
The pass is quite narrow and the whales were diving very close to the shore, just a few meters off the rocks. They were also doing the bubble ring thing but not surfacing through the bubbles. One of the humpbacks was raising a fin and bringing it down on the water with a loud thud and splash. The sound of their blowing is awesome when there is no background noise, it’s a funny feeling to know such massive creatures are swimming just under the boat. A truly magical experience and so unexpected.
After the whale experience I didn’t want to use the engine so sailed in a fickle wind for the next couple of hours. We didn’t make many miles but enjoyed the sounds of the eagles and otters without the engine blocking everything out.
This evening I am still on a high from the whale experience. To be drifting in complete silence with them was something I never expected. I tried getting some photos but missed the real close up ones.
Tonight we are anchored in a place called Winter Harbour. It has a gravel road running down to it and I went for a walk in the early evening. Didn’t see much apart from trees. Tomorrow I set off early towards Craig, the largest town on Price of Wales Island. Total voyage distance 923.6 miles.
Logged 9th June 2016
The Adventures of Captain Ray Penson 
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