Tuesday-Friday, May 9 - 12, 2006: Campbell River to Port McNeill

The Maizels ("Annaruth") were in Campbell River waiting for us when we arrived with the Hoener’s on Saturday afternoon. We planned on continuing our journey to Alaska with them. We gave ourselves another day to get our e-mail, do any reprovisioning and just rest. Then Monday was rotten weather so we left around 8 a.m. on Tuesday, May 9 to make it through the Seymour Narrows around slack. Our experience from last year led us to take the narrows about an hour early. It was more of an "E" ride than we expected—but it is a wide passage and "Kasekuchen" handled it well.

We waited for Maizels to catch up and had a beautiful clear day to make the long trip to Port McNeill. Got in around 6:30 p.m. Tied up at outer dock across from school bus tie up. The next morning the "bus" came in around 8:30 a.m. and off came 50 or so students from surrounding islands.

The island "bus"

Port McNeil is a pretty good provisioning town with a great gift store and art gallery. I personally think it is an ugly town with old strip malls which make up most of the town, but the residents are friendly and seem happy there. Needed a day to repair some things and wait for perfect weather to cross the Georgia Straits. Unfortunately we missed the "perfect day" on Wednesday, The forecast seemed to indicate an even more "perfect" day on Thursday—so we waited. Thursday turned out to be terrible---so we waited….