Moving From Discovery Bay

October 26th (Saturday)
The morning dawned as a beautiful day! As forecasted it was crisp and sunny. We pulled up anchor and headed out of Discovery Bay just before 11:00 so as to ride the ebbing tide out Seaforth Channel. The night-time low-lying cloud around the mountains was just burning off, and the heat from the sun warmed our enclosure up to a very comfortable temperature. 

We motored out over calm waters, and as we got closer to the open water we saw a sea otter sleeping on the surface. At first we thought it was a sea otter, but as it did not move as we went by, we wondered if it was just a log. Just after we had passed it by, however, its feet parted and it stuck its head up in surprise, it had been sleeping.
About three nautical miles before we rounded Cape Swaine we started to feel the swells. As we neared the outer water the swells got bigger and bigger. According to the marine weather the swells were 3-4 meters. The swells were south-westerly, and the waves created by the north-westerly breeze were crossing the swells, making for a bumpy ride. As we came into the area of St. John Harbour and Dyer Cove we came in past Rage Reef. 

The large swells were cresting and becoming massive rollers, curling beautifully over the rocks, and then returning to simple waves. Coming in between the shore and the reef the seas were a jumbled mess caused by the incoming swells, swells rebounding back out from land, and the waves created from the wind coming in from the side. 

Once inside the harbour/anchorage area we were sheltered from the swells, but the waves from the wind were still coming in. We found an area that we felt was the most protected, although it was still getting some rollers, and we dropped anchor. From the sounds of the anchor, and the feel of the boat, we could tell that it was a rocky bottom and that it must have been larger rocks, as we did not set well. The area of the anchorage that was mud was fully open to the north, and since stronger north winds were forecasted for the next couple of days we decided it was not the best spot to be. We raised anchor and headed back out through the mess of waves into the large swells. It was really too bad that the anchorage didn't work out, because it looked like a beautiful area to explore, but I think that calmer weather would be required.
We decided instead to go to a bay off of Berry Inlet on the north side of Seaforth Channel. We anchored, and set well in mud.  It was very interesting because the bay was full of jellyfish. They appeared to be moon jellies, the same type as in Discovery Bay, but they were very small. They were only a couple of inches across instead of between 6-10" like they were at Discovery. From watching them from our cockpit they were behaving the same as the ones in Discovery; swimming up to the surface, turning upside down, and floating back down. When we looked across the water we could see many spots, spots like raindrops, but it was jellyfish breaking the surface of the water and making a circular ripple.
We went out for an evening shoreline row in our tender and set out our crab trap. Fingers crossed for some edible-sized crabs! On our row back we saw a beautiful pink sunset over the low-lying land that surrounded our anchorage.