Bears

Thursday May 31st 2012

Woke up to rain and 10C but at least the gale warning has been removed for now so we will carry on, a 5 hour run today from Shearwater through Milbanke Sound to Bottleneck Inlet.

Writing this later! We left at 9:30 , I had plotted 2 courses for today, one outside through Milbanke Sound and another, 6 miles longer but more sheltered, through Reid Passage and Oscar Passage.  

Dryad Point lighthouse, Bell Bella

Ivory Island, Milbanke Sound



Crossing Milbanke Sound and looking East. Nothing west till Japan

 As it turned out Milbanke looked OK and since the open portion (open to the Pacific) is only about an hour or so, we stayed outside. The swells were deceiving and were probably a good 2 meters high so we rocked and rolled for a little while but not too bad.  
The weather brightened up a bit so when we arrived at the entrance to Bottleneck Inlet at 2 PM we decided to keep going for a while.
Were we ever glad that we did!
About an hour later, we came around a corner into Princess Royal Channel and found a huge grizzly bear swimming across the channel right in front of us. We slowed and he passed about a boat length from us . I am sure he was not happy to see us so close but we sure got a kick out of it..

Swimming grizzly in Princess Royal reach

Grizzly too close for his comfort, we felt safe

  
We carried on to Khutze inlet for a total of 73 miles for the day and arrived at the anchorage at 4:30pm. It was low tide when we arrived so we ended up anchoring just a couple of hundred yards from the beach and right away Vivian spotted 2 more grizzlies, a sow and a yearling right on the beach in front of us .

Hard to see here but grizzly sow and yearling cub foragin on beach

They foraged around for a good half hour then entered the water and swam across a small 50 yard channel and disappeared into the bush.

All in all it was a good day.