Desolation Sound

We didn't have far to go today and  won't for the next few days. The anchorages in Desolation Sound are not far away from each other. It was Captain Cook who named the area, apparently at a time when he was in low spirits. It's difficult to understand now how he could have seen such beauty as "Desolation,"  but maybe he was lonely for home. 

We're in Grace Harbour tonight. There's only one other boat in here at the moment. That's pretty uncharacteristic of this anchorage in my experience. It is normally chockablock full of boats, but this is the Monday after a three day weekend in Canada, so I guess everyone is back at work. 

There's a trail that starts at the head of the bay and goes to a lovely little lake.  It isn't a long hike, but it did offer a bit of exercise.

For dinner we pooled our culinary resources and shared dinner on Opus: sausages on the barbie, potato salad, and steamed veggies. 

It has been nice traveling with Opus. It has had the effect of increasing the size of our party without making less space available on either boat. 

Tomorrow we will make our way farther into the sound and visit an anchorage that would be inaccessible on a July afternoon. Desolation Sound gets so crowded during the summer. The last time I anchored in Melanie Cove, where we're going tomorrow, the wildfires to the east were pumping so much smoke into the air we couldn't see to the other end of the anchorage. 

It's funny how early these two crews go to bed. I'm not suggesting we should be partying, but it's 9:15, still light out, and I'm the only one on either boat that is still up. It does get chilly in the evening, so it makes sense to crawl into a warm bed. But there is weather to download, an engine to check, a plotter to program, a blog to write, etc, so I get a lot of that done between eight and ten, when the conversations have died off and everyone is turning their beds down, so to speak. 

The nice thing about low mileage days, aside from giving us the afternoon to play is that it also allows us to sleep in, so when I stay up past 11 getting stuff done or watching video downloads I still get plenty of sleep. 

Alas, while I've been plucking away at this and doing other things at the same time, it has gotten dark, ten o'clock has come and gone and I'm feeling exhaustion creep up on me. It's time to make my way below deck.