Leaving Echo Bay Marina after a leisurely morning, we motored down to Cullen Harbour dropped the kayaks and spent a pleasant couple of hours touring around. As the evening drew in it started raining and the fog came in giving some very atmospheric conditions. That night it rained throughout and because we hadn't put the shelter up things started to get soggy inside!

After a long and very wet night we woke to a very foggy morning.  We waited until about midday and then pulled up the anchor after convincing ourselves that the fog was thinning.  As we left Cullen Harbour though we realised the fog was still a real pea souper!  We descended into a world of white with visibility down to less than 200 yards.  In this weird world we finally saw our first whale, probably about 100 yards away to our starboard.  We slowed down the motor and watched as it's tail rose and it dived from view.  Thinking that was it we slowly motored on but then the whale reappeared on our port side, no more than 30 yards away!  After a few blows she turned tail and dived again leaving us to descend once more into a very white world.  As we entered Trainer Passage, we started looking for somewhere to drop the hook as it was very hard keeping concentrating in the thick fog but then thankfully the fog did start to clear and so we motored on.  As we got more 'inland' the fog dispersed more and by the time we had hit Arrow Passage we were in clear, if breathless air.  Cruising down the passage, and seeing that we were making good time with the current, we decided to press on past Waddington Bay and south to be closer to Port MacNeil the next day.  We went well down Retreat Passage but then as we went through Spring Passage we unexpectedly got caught up in turbulence again which slowed our progress dramatically. 

Coming out into Knight inlet though things resolved themselves and we made good progress through the Indian Group to drop the hook at Mound Island around 5pm.

Coming out of Mound bay early the next morning we crossed our fingers and hoped that the fog wouldn't be around.  The air was all very still and we were also at a really low tide (about at Datum).  Heidi navigated us through a series of small channels and then we emerged into Queen Charlotte straight.

  The mist was hanging around but not too bad as we could see the tip of Malcolm island.  Moving up channel a small cruise liner passed us by.  The wake of the liner was massive making us bob around like a cork and we were very glad that we weren't in a standard year dodging in between the Cruise ships . 

After getting past the wake we then started cutting across the channel, whilst dodging another tug with a large load of containers on a barge.  As we were doing this we heard another whale blow and could see closer into the coast, another humpback whale.  Approaching Malcolm Island we started hitting confused water again and we found ourselves struggling to make progress.  At the same time we sighted whales all around us blowing - quite a thing to have to both handle the boat through the swirls and watching the whales!  After another fraught half hour of struggling through the turbulence we finally cleared Donegal head and things settled down to a steady and uneventful motor up towards Port MacNeil 

We arrived around 1pm and spent the rest of the afternoon pottering around town.

We went for drinks at Gus's bar around 4 and had a lovely time watching the Olympics, leaving around 7pm and then waited for Lottie who made it to us about 9:30pm after a very long drive!