It hasn't stopped raining in nine days.

It hasn’t stopped raining in nine days. One after another the storms roll through, swelling the streams, toppling otherwise healthy trees, and testing both anchor holding and patience. As the winds calm and the clouds rise, the stunningly raw beauty of the landscape peaks out just long enough to remember why you’re here. But before you can wipe the water from our eyes and reach for your camera, the sky darkens, the peaks retreat behind their veil, and the halyards take up their symphony, accompanied only by the ever-present pounding of rain- water droplets forced from their clouds and hurled at earth with apparent wrath for those subject to endure the endless line of storms marching up the coast.

So we should not have been surprised by the white-capped peaks that met our hull as we turned into Fisher Channel. Still, we were unprepared for the lashing the sea was eager to present. We quickly turned back to stow the boat, suit up, and prepare for battle. Two hours later we rounded the same corner, this time braced and poised. We hoisted sails, demonstrating our capacity to harness the same instrument the storm was using against us. Under a storm jib and a double-reefed main we pushed forward, head down and rail in the water. Perhaps to punish this stubborn exertion against nature, the winds gathered strength and the seas roiled with rage. But on we fought.

When I pulled back my hood and stole a glance at the chart three hours later, we had made a meager four miles of forward progress. The storm laughed at our naivety, using it’s own force to defeat it, as we slowly slammed our way from one side of the channel to the other. The wind freshened again, testing our limits. Halcyon sighed mightily as we turned back again, tail tucked and sails flapping. Those grueling three hours we retraced in an effortless thirty minutes, sliding down the swells now encouraging our retreat.

Back in the safety of the inlet, those seas couldn’t have been that big, the tide changed, we gave up too soon, it’s died down now I’m sure. We shook ourselves off, uttered some words of encouragement to our poor vessel, and marched around the corner, for the third time in a day, this time just plain pissed off. Fueled by adrenaline, exhaustion, and saturation, we powered up the shore, slowly, steadily, and cautiously, weary of incurring any more ferocity from the heavens. Finally we crawled into Jenny Inlet, eight hours late and utterly spent.

It would have been a successful journey, though, had that marked the end of our hardships.