What a Difference…

The view at 1800 hrs (click on images to enlarge)

To borrow from the old song, what a difference a day makes – or even just 12 hours!

The photo above was taken from our boat on an August evening at about 1800 hours (6 pm in land-talk). We were on our way home from a summer-long journey up the BC coast, and we’d just dropped anchor in a cozy cove at the mouth of Fish Egg Inlet. Before starting dinner preparations, I took a moment to savour and photograph the view: looking through one of the anchorage’s “windows” into adjacent Illahie Inlet, with hints of the Coast Mountain range in the background.

Our plan was to head out early the next morning, as several long and challenging passages lay ahead and we needed to take advantage of any decent weather on offer.

But as it turned out, an early start wasn’t possible. Here’s the view looking in the same direction the next morning at 0600:

It was as if someone had drawn a huge, almost opaque isolation curtain right around our boat. (In reality our view was more obscured than the image shows – I’ve increased the contrast a bit so that you can make out the nearby shores without too much eye strain.)

The fog lifted by 1015 and we were finally able to get underway. With the late start we didn’t get as far as we’d hoped that day, but fortunately we had built extra time into our itinerary for unforeseen delays like this.

That morning was a good reminder of why mariners commonly refer to August as “Fogust” on the BC coast – and how important it is to keep your plans and expectations flexible when travelling by boat.