Windy Bay (Fjiordland)

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Monday May 21, 2012 Oliver Cove to Windy Bay (Fjiordland)

It was raining when we got up this morning and it has rained all day. We turned up Mathieson Channel into a gray drizzly Fjiordland and we discussed whether to take a shorter route through Jackson Passage to Finlayson Channel, the main Inside Passage Route or stay with our longer more scenic course perhaps without the scenery. We stayed the course and were rewarded with stupendous views up Kynock Inlet with its towering waterfalls and sheer granite cliffs rising thousands of feet above sea level. According to our charts in one spot where we sat the mountains above were 3,100 feet and the water beneath us was 1,339 feet deep. We drifted to within fifty feet of a cliff to take pictures of a waterfall and the sonar recorded 500 feet of depth. Deep lateral scars in the granite walls spoke of tremendous glacial forces that carved these fjords.

Through Mathison Narrows it was just around the corner to Windy Bay where we hugged the inside corner and anchored in 50'. Here the walls are also steep and the snow line covers the heights and stays in some of the sheltered crevices dropping almost to the waterline. We thought we might have the whole bay to ourselves but alas two more boats have anchored nearby. We are rapidly getting used to the isolation. We did not see one other other boat in Matheison Channel all day. I took the kayak around and played hide-and -seek with eleven seals in the shallows at the head of the bay. I would slowly paddle toward them and they would disappear then all pop up and look at me from a little farther away.

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Photos

Fjiordland
Lateral glacial scarring