North of Cape Caution Where the real wilderness begins
Article 2 of 5 Endless Song — Alaska Voyage 2025 | June 14–20, 2025 There are places that exist primarily in the imagination of sailors before they are experienced. Cape Caution is one of them. For months before our departure, the name had appeared in weather forecasts, cruising guides, and the cautionary tales of more experienced friends. "You need the right window," they'd say. "Don't rush it." We didn't rush it. We spent nearly a week in Blunden Harbour, watching the weather, waiting for the right conditions. With a forecast a good window appearing in a day or two, we snuck out of blunden and made for Miles Inlet. And the following morning of June 14th — 6:45am, 5 degrees Celsius, one knot of wind — we finally rounded it.
"Cape Caution on our stern. The mythical Egg Island, whose weather forecasts we'd been watching for over a fortnight." It was, in the best possible sense, anticlimactic. Calm seas. A gentle swell. We photographed the cape on our stern and posted it to the group. After weeks of anticipation, we were through. North of 51 degrees. Into the Central BC Coast. A Different World The BC Central Coast is one of the great wilderness areas of the Pacific Northwest. Almost nobody goes there. The communities are tiny — Shearwater on Denny Island, Bella Bella on Campbell island and Klemtu on Swindle Island — and the anchorages are often accessible only to boats that can handle shoal water and read charts carefully. The day after Cape Caution, we had one of our finest days of sailing. Near calm in the morning gave way to 10 knots of breeze, and Endless Song — full genoa, full main — moved through the water with that effortless grace that a well-balanced heavy-displacement boat finds in light conditions. 5 degrees and sunshine. We called it almost tropical. "This boat sails like a dream. She's so well balanced in light or heavier winds."
Shearwater is the reprovisioning hub for the central coast — a fuel dock, a small store, a repair facility, and a community of characters who have chosen to live at the end of a very long road that isn't a road at all. The store was bare of fresh produce when we arrived. We made the ferry crossing to the store at Bella Bella. There we met a group of women who were paddling kayaks up to Glacier Bay, we thought we were brave?
Klemtu — warmest day of the voyage. T-shirt weather in the wilderness. Klemtu was a revelation. A Kitasoo/Xai'xais First Nation community on Swindle Island, accessible only by floatplane or ferry, it sits beside a lighthouse bluff overlooking a channel of extraordinary beauty. The day we arrived was the warmest of the entire voyage — both of us in t-shirts, Darrell making the switch to shorts. "Beautiful sunny day today. I think it's the warmest we've had this whole trip. Both of us in t-shirts and I'm considering shorts." From Klemtu, the coast turns north and west. The distances between communities grow longer. The weather becomes more variable. The boat becomes your world. And the wilderness — the real, untouched, spectacular wilderness of the north BC coast — closes in around you in the most wonderful way. We were heading for Alaska.
