Log Entry: Friday, June 4th, 1999

Cyrus Cove to El Capitan (Dry Passage): 24 nm

A miserable sail in the rain, sometimes had to rely on radar because of poor visibility; we saw caves onshore ...

Anchored in the middle of the channel.  Two minutes after anchoring, a small blue tour boat went by; we decided it would be vitally important to have our anchor light on that night ...

Dinghied back to a dock (cold wind, rain in the face), which turned out to be a lodge. A man came down the ramp from the building, and told us the caves were accessible from the Forestry Service float, just a few hundred yards further. Once there, we saws that there were three trailers. There appeared to be no activity, but as we passed the last building, the door opened, and Joe invited us in. He offered us coffee, and we sat and talked for a time before his wife Ula returned from a walk. A fascinating couple, Joe had retired a few years back, but didn’t like it, so he had taken the job of taking tours through the caves. Ula was Swedish, a Forestry Service volunteer, and took care of some special sites around the island. The other two trailers were normally occupied by full-time Forestry staff, but this being the weekend, they had been flown out to Ketchikan, and wouldn't be back before Monday morning.

We eventually realized that we were not going to tour the caves today: Joe informed us that tours went at 8, 10, 1, and 3. We got the impression that the 8 am tour was not his favourite, so we said we would come back for the 10 am tour in the morning.