I finally turn away from Johnstone Straits and head north while east of Hanson Island. Here I find the tide currents I was expecting. A strong current spits me out at 6 knots between Hanson and Swanson Islands. I had planned on hopping north between a bunch of islands here but as long as this current is going my way, I decide to take it. So I do a long crossing to a little island in the Queen Charlotte Inlet. On this crossing I see lots of little dolphins breathing. One of them jumps out of the water close enough to identify it as a white-sided dolphin. When I get to my unnamed island, it has large colony of harbor seals on it.
Surely the current I have been riding will peter out here, I plan on going north to get to the chain of islands on the north end of the inlet. But before doing that I tried pointing the boat in the direction I really want to go to see what will happen. The current is still going my way, and I am able to go 6 knots with its help! I spend over half the day at this speed and make up for a lot lost time. This helpful current lasts until just before I get to Bramham Island. Then I slow down to around 3 knots as I eddy-hop along the shoreline and between a bunch of small islands. Still a reasonable rate for making progress!
After reaching Bramham Island, I turned over my chart case to navigate the afternoon. There I found that I had put in the wrong chart! So I spent the whole afternoon exploring an unknown coastline, never knowing what to expect around the next point. It was kind of fun! I did have a waypoint for a suggested campsite, near a town called Port Progress. The town is inland, and I never actually saw it. I think it is really just a lumber town. My waypoint turned out to be in the middle of the water. Where did I get those co-ordinates?
Late in the day I started looking around for places to camp. Bramham and all the little islands off it have steep sides of solid rock. At the top of the rock trees and brush grow right down to the high tide line. The trees here are different than the ones I have been seeing. They do not grow up into a solid canopy to block out the sun, instead they let the sun in everywhere. As a result, brush grows everywhere and there is no clear space under the trees away from shore. So even in places where the monolithic shoreline has been broken up or ground into a beach, there is no-place to get above the high tide line to camp. I started eying the flatish areas on bald rock areas on the shore. I'd look at one of them and say "nope, I'm not that desperate yet", then keep going and looking for something better. Eventually I got desperate enough to land and explore one bald rocky area. It had several workable places, so I pulled the boat up into one and set my tent up in the other. The tide was only 14 feet high that night, which turned out to be the lowest high tide of the week. So I was safely way above the tide that evening.
I was able to get one bar of cellphone coverage and text to Kate DesLauriers "I'm camping on a rock!" She replied that was old news. The BASK community had been watching my progress (very impressed with 6 knots most of the day). Someone had zoomed in on my campsite with Google Earth, noticed I was camping on a rock, and passed the word around.