Sullivan Bay Lay Day

The big event this morning is cinnamon buns. We placed our order yesterday. Scoping out the general store door via binoculars, Karen was at the store right at 9am, harvesting the sweet treats as the trays were brought into the store from the restaurant.

They were much better than we remembered from two years ago, and rank them at the top of all marina cinnamon buns. A quick nuke, some butter, and all is well with the world.

cinnamon buns on board this fine morning

Our decision to stay a second night was driven by the opportunity to eat off the boat. Karen had reached out to Sullivan Bay earlier in the year to learn the days the restaurant was open. We signed up for dinner when we made moorage reservations, and were happy to find out Friday is prime rib dinner. Rumor has it that we will not be alone as they are sold out tonight for dinner.

In the afternoon, after completing boat chores and walking the docks, we were sitting in the saloon working on the blog when Karen called out “whales breaching!”

Sure enough, out in the bay were two whales breaching. Not once, not twice but both continued multiple times. After a prolonged display of breaching, they turned to flipper slapping. Again, many, many slaps were made by both animals. Next came tail slapping, as one whale started to swim off the other followed in a nose down attitude and gave a continuous display of tail slapping. We lost count at 20. Crowds formed on the docks to watch the action.

In 21 years of cruising the PNW, that was undoubtedly the most amazing display of breaching, flipper and tail slapping we have ever witnessed.

To top off the day, we enjoyed the prime rib dinner held every Friday in season. It was a full house and the meal was very, very good. Even Karen, who is not a red meat person, really enjoyed her meal. The menu was prime rib, mashed potatoes with gravy, green beans or broccoli, Yorkshire pudding, Caesar salad and a dessert of fig cake, with a creamy layer topped by a toffee glaze. Kudos to Chef Mark!

great service and great food at sulivan bay

sunset view from sullivan bay

Muirhead Islands to Sullivan Bay

It’s a relatively short hop over to Sullivan Bay, and we have reservations for two days. The only navigation consideration is timing Stuart Narrows to pass at or near slack. Our exit timing confirmed slack is 10 minutes after high or low tide at Alert Bay.

We had a non-eventful run up Drury Inlet and through Stuart Narrows. As soon as we emerged, we started to see lots of other pleasure boats.

We were joined by four other boats on the approach to Sullivan Bay. Seems most cruisers leave before noon and the new arrivals show up between noon and one. There were a few more arrivals in the afternoon, but not many.

Sullivan Bay Marina

We wanted 50amp power and things were busy, so Bill, the dockmaster, wanted to put us on the outside of dock 1, which is too exposed for Karen’s tastes. So we ended up at the outer end of Dock 3, in front of a tidy, vacant float home. We were basically alone on this dock for our entire stay and we liked it! Views were great!

Oceanflyer all alone on dock 3

Bill reported that the season had been a little slow, but it’s picking up and they are sold out for Friday Prime Rib dinner tomorrow.

We checked out the store, bought some odds and ends, did laundry, off-loaded recyclables and put in our order for cinnamon buns to be picked up tomorrow morning.

We always make it a point to walk the docks and inspect the float homes. They typically are quite nice and well kept. The big surprise this year was a bright red helicopter on a floating landing pad, moored behind one of the homes. Nice way to travel!

if you have a helicopter, why not make it red!

Muirhead Islands Lay Day

We enjoyed a pleasant morning working on long term route planning as we start to get serious about heading south. We need to be back in Bellingham in early August.

beautiful morning loooking east from our muirhead anchorage

After the tide turns and begins to rise, we are going to do a dinghy explore of Acteon Sound. We have taken the big boat in there before, but the Muirheads are perfectly positioned to allow an easy dinghy excursion all the way back to the entry to Tsibass lagoon.

the view to the west toward sutherland bay

Unfortunately, Mother Nature had other ideas. Though sunny and bright, it was quite windy. There were whitecaps everywhere we looked and a few even in our anchorage.  We waited patiently for the winds to lay down, but it was late evening when that finally occurred.

Instead, we chilled out and did some boat chores, enjoying being the only boat in the Muirheads.

Blunden Harbour to Muirhead Islands, Drury Inlet

We are now in a pattern of foggy mornings. The visibility for our trip today from Blunden to the Muirhead Islands in Drury Inlet ranged from 150 feet to ½ mile.

fog to start the day

As we left the fog behind in Queen Charlotte Sound and turned up Wells Passage, we saw a buck swimming across our path. We slowed, and the buck took our stern and continued his long swim to get to the other side.

this guy was an amazing swinner

The entrance to Drury Inlet is guarded by Stuart Narrows. Slack is predicted to be 10 minutes after high or low at Alert Bay. There is some latitude when passing though the rapids depending on your boat and the tidal exchange, but at full current these narrows should not be challenged. It’s not unusual to see boats anchored in Helen Bay just NW of the narrows as they await slack current. None were there as we entered this time, and passage through the narrows was uneventful.

We broke up the cruise to the Muirheads with a detour past Jennis Bay. We often made Jennis Bay Marina a mandatory stop back in its heyday. We spent many fall days there kayaking, enjoying great company and celebrating birthdays of Alison’s kids.

Sadly, Alison is long gone, having moved on with life. Two years ago when we were last in Drury, a floating lumber camp was in the east side of the bay near the marina, but this year they are on the south shore of Drury Inlet.  That changed certainly cleaned up the look of Jennis Bay.

We wanted to try a different anchorage in the Muirheads this year. We have always anchored in the one boat cove on the NE side of the islands inbetween the guitar shaped islet and the islet immediately NW. But when we were last year, we visited a boat that chose to anchor on the south side of the islands in the cove farthest west and liked what we saw, especially as they were not stern tied.

looking east down drury inlet form our muirheads anchorage

This anchorage provides delightful views in all directions. The only downside is that the west winds and fetch can build here. Our heavy boat handled the moderate afternoon fetch well, so no problem. The third alternative to anchor is the south cove, which also has nice views and offers better protection from the westerlies.

looking west from our anchorage

entrance to actress passage in the upper left corner of the image

Feeling the need to stretch our legs,  we took a dinghy ride to the old logging dock just NE of the entrance to Sutherland Bay. You can see it clearly from our anchorage. The dock is still suitable to land the dinghy and gives you access to logging roads for a hike.

We continued our tour into Sutherland Bay, checking it out as a potential anchorage. The winds started to pick up and fetch to build, so we turned around and headed back to OceanFlyer, where we spent a peaceful night.

Millbrook Cove to Blunden Harbour

We awoke to fog. That was not in the forecast!

We picked today to go around Cape Caution because forecasted sea state was the calmest we’ve seen for weeks.

The blessing with fog is that with fog comes calm seas. We left right behind the Outer Reef we followed in yesterday. It did not take long before he disappeared from sight. In fact, the first two hours of our trip were in fog with visibility of 1 mile to much less. I kept finding small, go- fast targets on the radar with no AIS and Karen kept a sharp eye to see them if she could. Sometimes even if they were 1/8 mile away, there was no joy. The seas were calm, though, with ripples and less than one foot swell.

not much to see in the fog, even as the sun makes an attempt to burn it off

Even after we left the fog on our stern, the seas remained almost flat, improving as we made our way south.

fog clearing from the west

We passed our good friends aboard Alaskan Dream (OceanFlyer’s sister ship) as we were both abeam Cape Caution. They were heading north for their annual fishing trip, towing their Grady White. We exchanged greetings on the VHF but never saw them in the fog.

We entered Blunden, passing a large farmed-fish transport vessel anchored just outside the entry. Blunden looked just like last time: sunny, windy and whitecapped. We enjoyed a peaceful afternoon relaxing.