Port Neville looking out to Johnstone Strait
As it turns out, our next move was south to Desolation Sound and better weather. Everyone has their breaking point and, I'm afraid, I reached mine. The Broughtons are a place to be enjoyed at a distance while travelling its jumbled waterways: the wild and steep shorelines are uninviting, as is the weather, and it's time to move on.
We left Crease Island around noon on Friday, back through Chatham Channel and into Johnstone Strait, for Port Neville with the flood tide. In the early 1900s, Port Neville was a thriving settlement with float homes and logging camps hugging the shorelines. A sawmill was built along with a steam railway for hauling logs from the woods, and the harbour was busy with tugs and barges. But the only source of hustle and bustle today stems from the commercial fishing boat anchored in the bay the offloads fish from smaller vessels as they ply the local waters.
We had hoped to take advantage of Johnstone Strait on our return, perhaps even getting in a good down-wind sail, but woke up to another morning of pea-soup fog which called for a change of plans. Rather than being able to leave early to arrive at Current Passage during slack tide, we had to wait until the fog cleared before we moved on so decided to take the middle route through the Discovery Islands again and went to Forward Harbour off Wellborne Channel to position ourselves for the first set of rapids, Whirlpool and Greene Point, which we'll transit in the morning and afternoon. Funnily enough, after checking the log, we were anchored here exactly one month ago on July the 7th – it seems more like a lifetime ago.
Tomorrow, we'll move to Shoal Bay on East Thurlow Island for the night where we hope to see a couple we met over the winter in Poulsbo, Kelly and Linda on Blues Power, who we've heard are staying there until the end of August.
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