We decided to wait until the afternoon to catch the flood current, so we slept in until almost 7:30, a feat that would never again be repeated on our trip. We lazily relaxed in camp for a couple hours, another feat that would never again be repeated. Two long hard days had left my muscles in a sorry state, however. I had some slight tendonitis due in part, I believe, to the white knuckled trip across Boundary Passage, as well as to using a stiff carbon-fiber paddle. Today I switched to my backup fiberglass paddle to give my fingers an easier time while they were adjusting to the strain of paddling for 32 more days. 32 more days - I don't even want to think about that right now.
The current is favorable yet mild, and we cruise along at a comfortable pace under sunny skies and calm weather, although the VHF gives ominous reports of 20 to 30 knot NW winds south of Nanaimo. I turn my VHF off and put it away for a few days. No use listening to bad news. Luckily, the winds do not appear.
By 7pm, we reach our planned destination at Pirates Cove, a marine park on an island that just of De Courcy Island. The two islands are, in fact, connected by what looks like a bog, and when we land, swarms of mosquitos rise up and pick the flesh off our bones. We briefly glimpsed the designated campsites as we raced backed to our boats and paddled out of the bay, swarms of bugs trailing along behind us. There was no chance that we would camp there.
We headed around to the cove that separated the two islands on the north side and found many moored boats, but no campsites. Roy pointed out some nice brown beaches across the channel a mile away that were right below an area marked 'cliffs' on our chart. There were definitely cliffs there, but there seemed to be a lot of beach area, and we would reasonably find some place to camp there. We decided to cross over and test our luck, or lack thereof.
As we got closer and closer, the "brown beaches" started to look more and more log-covered, and when we got to the cliffs, we discovered that they were, in fact, logs.
all logs. There were several huge log rafts anchored just below the cliffs, and the only spot that was remotely non-vertical was a small bivy cave where we could sleep sitting down while our kayaks were pulled up on the logs. No thank you.
It was after 8pm and we headed back to Pirates Cove after debating heading into uncharted territory. We had passed a few spots along the outside of the island where we could possibly land a kayak, and going back to scout those, we found a decent rock shelf onto which we could pull our kayaks. The mosquitos were still bad, but there was a breeze, and after eating on the rock shelf, we pitched our tents right there on the rock shelf and then quickly carried them up into the woods, jumped in them and went to bed. Shortly after we arrived, just as dusk was settling in, a tugboat sped by and headed over to the log booms by the cliffs on the opposite side of the channel. It was still over there with its lights on when we went to bed, and when we got up in the morning, the log booms were gone.