First Sightings - Bears and Whales :)

Hi all! I'm sitting in the Laundromat (they have free Internet) in port McNeill, BC. Getting our foul weather gear livened up after so much use. Ron ran to the liquor store to get some beer (you could make money running beer up to Canada - sooo expensive up here!). We made the short trek from Alert Bay early this afternoon so that we could have access to more choices for provisioning before our last big push up to southeast Alaska. We must have picked the right time because we saw minke whales along the way! We saw them a couple times and then i got the camera. Waiting for the right shot, I wasn't expecting him/her to surface less than 40 feet away! I could have gotten the blowhole and everything! I'm lucky I didn't drop the camera in the water. Well, there's a further away shot on flickr (by the way Wally, thanks for the upgrade. I'll let you know how it works out.) The weather was fair coming up Johnstone and Broughton Straits after waiting out a couple fronts in Cordero Cove. Which was where we sighted our first bear. When we pulled in the cove, oh story there.
It was a confusing coastline, with islands and lovely little peninsulas and we were looking for a specific three before we got to green point rapids. Juichi had been moving at a good clip, almost 9 knots, over land and we didn't want to pass our entrance. We were checking our numbers on the GPS and decided to was time. I was at the helm and Ron was the lookout. We spotted some heavy kelp (check out our anchor pull up in Alert Bay on filckr. it shows how much kelp is around these parts) and Ron was smart enough to have me pull back out and approach again. Once we weaved our way through the rocks and kelp, we realized we entered an island too soon. We were lucky.
Anyway, we pulled in and while setting the anchor and scoping out a stern tie set up I spotted the black bear. What a treat! He didn't come around on Thurday. That was the day we had non-stop rain.
Things are going well. Not as much nice weather as we would like but hot springs are just around the corner! We're a little nervous about our rounding of Cape Caution, which should be in the next few days. However, we have full confidance in Juichi and each other. We'll wait for the right weather window and it will be as an invigorating day as it was coming up the straits.
Till the next stop. Hope everyone is well.