June 28

June 24/25

"Knee deep in the water somewhere, blue sky breeze blowin’ wind in my hair…..and I think I might’a found me my own kind of Paradise. "  

 Zach Brown Band

We left Shearwater around 0900 in gray overcast skies, with the water even looking gray – everything was kind of gray……….we came 15 miles inland, and, PRESTO, sunlight! I can’t believe the difference this sunshine has made on my outlook! We came down Lama Passage (aka Llama, Llama Passage – we can’t help it, our grandkids love the Llama Llama books – “Llama Llama New Pajamas”) to Codville Lagoon, which is a Marine Provincial Park. Lovely. And we hope it’s full of prawns…………..On our way down here (about 3 hours) we talked about why this was better than the Broughtons, our previously favorite spot in Canada. We have decided that we were right – the farther north you go, the better it is. The Broughtons are much nicer than Desolation Sound – fewer boats, prettier scenery, etc…………and going past Cape Caution is much the same – this is MUCH more beautiful than the Broughtons…. We went down Lama Passage for 2 hours today, and we saw 3 boats, total…..’way fewer people up here.

We are anchored tonight in Codville Lagoon, a Provincial Marine Park. It’s lovely…we’re in about 40 feet, surrounded by old cedar forests. (If we were here in December, they’d have airlifted me to a Vancouver ICU by now – there is NOTHING but cedar here) It’s gorgeous.

Okay, I’ve just gotta say it…………we’ve been bombarded by “This is Bear Country” signs. Signs telling us to take noisy things with us, reminding us not to leave food, etc., lying around.” Okay, so if this is bear country, where are all the freakin’ bears??? I have not seen anything remotely resembling a bear. I don’t know who is responsible for perpetuating this nonsense (probably the BC Tourist Office), but, trust me, there are no bears to be seen….if you have seen a bear, it’s probably the same bear that everybody else has seen. There is ONE bear in northern BC , and he’s running around like a crazy monster, getting everybody excited. RELAX….I’m telling you, there are no bears. (If a grizzly comes around tonight looking for hermit crabs, then, y’know, I’m just a tourist, eh?)

Tomorrow we’re heading for the Hakai Institute, over on Pruth Bay, on the Pacific side…..

June 25

We left Codville Lagoon around 8:30, after pulling  our prawn pots – 45 lovely prawns! Yum, scampi tomorrow! (Or coconut prawns, but that was what we had with the Ocean Falls prawns….)

Pruth Bay is about a 38-mile run, so, for us, that’s a 6-hour ride…….but it’s yet another beautiful day in Paradise, so that’s okay with me. I could even make Sun Tea, it’s so nice. (Was that me, whining about the weather 3 days ago???)

...and here's the west beach, a short walk from Pruth Bay: 

We’ve been admiring all the great sailboats up here – a 36’ Pearson Pilothouse caught our eye the other day, but we’ve decided that 36’ is just too small – no room for a watermaker or a freezer. Saw one yesterday in Llama Llama that was making a good 8 knots (using his engine, not under sail). We’ve never seen a sailboat leave that kind of wake! We couldn’t see the name of the boat (it was about ½ mile away from us), so we don’t know the make of the boat, but we’re definitely going to start looking up here in BC for Nellie 2.

June  27

"Mother, Mother Ocean, I have heard your call…”

                                                            Jimmy Buffet

We left Pruth Bay at 0445, at first light. The water in Fitzhugh Sound was flat calm, and the only boats we saw were a tug pulling a couple of overloaded barges, off in the distance. After about 2 hours, we realized that even the ocean swells were low and calm. Our original plan was to go to Takush Harbour, on the south side of Smith Sound, and wait there for a quiet day to go around Cape Caution. After listening (or trying to listen – we get a tremendous amount of static on the radio when our engine is running – something else for Bob to fix) to Environment Canada’s marine weather, we realized that this is going to be the last calm day until at least Monday……which meant a long time sitting at anchor in Takush. Now, normally, I don’t have a lot of issues with sitting at anchor – it’s peaceful and often very restful (not much else to do but knit, read and nap). However, with the sword of Cape Caution hanging over our heads, sitting at anchor for 3 or 4 days would probably be anything BUT peaceful. So we made the decision to just keep going. This is against all advice, by the way. Everyone – simply EVERYONE – has told us (even the books) to make the crossing at first light, when the wind is calmest and the seas better. However, by the time we actually got out of Smith Sound, it was 10:00am. We hit Cape Caution around 12:30 – and saw quite a few boats making the crossing the other way. (Nobody was going south except for us and a cruise ship.) Certainly, the swells grew to about 1 – 1.5 metres, but that only lasted for about an hour or so. The swells weren’t coming fast, so it was really more like being passed by a 30’ Bayliner. Not bad at all. I was able to knit with size 1 needles when I wasn’t at the helm, so that tells you how calm it was. J When we got south of the cape, and into Queen Charlotte Straits, the wind picked up, but the water was calm again, since we were in the protection of so many islands. We are now anchored in Blunden Harbour (the US one – there’s another one north of Cape Caution, which makes for lots of confusion, at least on my part….Bob claims I am frequently confused about things, anyway, though). Steppe and Mary Williford are somewhere nearby, but with all the hills and rocks around us we cannot get through by radio.

Blunden Harbour is where the cougar got the dog in 2010 (for those of you who remember that story)….a couple was walking their dog, a Great Pyrenees – that’s not spelled right, I’m sure – when a cougar came out of the woods and attacked the dog. Bye, bye, puppy. The couple left Blunden and went back to Port McNeill, where we heard the story 2 weeks later. Bob was up later than I last night, and said that there were lots of animal noises last night – but he didn’t see anything. It was probably the bear…..and maybe the cougar. Canadian wildlife is overreported. (Except for eagles – they’re everywhere.) We’ve seen lots of dolphins, tons of eagles and a couple gray whales, but that’s it, as far as critters go.

Back in Shearwater (sung to the tune of "Oh, Lord, I'm Back in Lodi Again")

June 22

We’re still in St Johns Harbour….we got here on June 17^th, which was the last sunny day we’ve seen. L We have spent 6 days at anchor, more than we’ve ever spent at anchor (problems listed later). We met up here with Mel and Bernice, friends from Oak Harbor who spend their summers here yearly, and a whole group of folks from Campbell River, Bella Coola, Camano Island and Seattle. This is a great bunch of people – we’ve had a lot of fun. One of the main purposes of this cruise for us was fishing. (I hate to fish, BTW, it’s Bob’s thing). We got here – after spending a lovely day in sunny Shearwater (the last sun we’ve seen) on 6/16 – on the 17^th. We cruised into a tiny little bay with boats at the end – looking for all the world like a trailer park in South St. Louis County. (seriously) A guy (we later learned it was Ed, from Bella Coola) came out of his boat and directed us to a spot where we could anchor – two coves away…..this is not water for the timid. We threaded through some skinny spots and came upon a great big bay with a wide, flat mud bottom – perfect for holding. We anchored in about 37 feet of water (at low tide) with about 125’ of chain. Nice.   We dinghied over to chat with the folks in the “trailer park , finding our friends Mel and Bernice. (Mel is the designated King Of Fish in these parts.) So, the next day, in a downpour, Bob went fishing with Mel – at 5:00am, which is when, according to Mel, the fish bite). When he came back to the boat at 8:00am, Bob had a lovely 14# King salmon. Yum. And here is a picture of the quiet cove we're sitting in:

After that, it has rained continuously for the past 5 days. The first day of summer was yesterday – it was 50 degrees and raining. (I am grateful daily for the silk long johns I stuck in my drawer “just in case.”) Bob and Mel have fished daily – and we have been gifted with 4 chinook salmon (the limit) and one coho…..a total of about 67 pounds of fish. When you consider that wild, line-caught Pacific salmon sells (at my grocery store) for $10.00 a pound, that’s a great return on the $103 fishing license Bob bought. Here are the first and the last salmon Bob caught. I think they may be related, they look remarkably alike. 

Okay, every boating story has a bad part…………on every single “long” trip we’ve taken, something has gone wrong – we’ve lost the windlass, we’ve lost the computer, etc., etc……….and yesterday was ours. After catching a 22-pound Chinook and filleting it and putting it in our freezer, we spent the afternoon reading, knitting (me, not Bob) and otherwise killing time………around dinner time, after the martinis J, Bob went up on the flybridge to check the salmon in the freezer – HORRORS. The freezer was not working. My mind’s eye immediately envisioned 67 pounds of slimy, gray, nasty salmon……………consigned to the briny. Okay, it wasn’t that bad. No salmon was ruined – it was still cold, but had not begun to freeze, AND the freezer was pretty much saying ‘All done, no more worky.” All we could do was turn on the generator (which got it going again) for a couple of hours. However, we do need to sleep and the generator cannot go all night……so we turned it off. This morning, the salmon was still cold, but no freezing had occurred. So, Engineer Bob got to work! Our freezer has been moved to the forward stateroom (no more company – sorry, kids) and is now closer to the battery bank, thus working fine. 

Every cruise has its issues.

This is the longest we have ever been at anchor without moving the boat to another anchorage. I’ve got to say, it’s not my favorite thing. While we have had a good time fishing – especially Bob (and me – I’ve finished a pair of socks) – it has its down side. We started out with 200 gallons of water. We are fine in that department, however, no power pretty much means no water heater. Ice cold water. While really refreshing to brush one’s teeth in, not terribly exciting when washing one’s face. Showers? Fuggedaboudit. We are going au naturel. Bob took a “rain shower” the other morning – he couldn’t take it any longer. I heated water on the store to wash my hair, but I couldn’t figure out how to do that for a complete shower. Sigh.

We are planning on leaving tomorrow to go back to Shearwater (which is where I’ll post this) – the closest thing to civilization up here. They have SHOWERS.

June 23 - we're back in Shearwater, enjoying the hot showers and dinner out!

This is what Millbanke Sound (wave to Tokyo, everyone) looked like at 9:30 this morning........it was gorgeous!

The Ritz Carlton of the North.........

Okay, probably not quite as fancy as the Ritz, but certainly a fair cut above any of the other marinas up here....we are at Shearwater Resort and Marina, in, (wait for it)......Shearwater, BC. We're about 2 miles from Bella Bella, also known as Waglisla (it's First Nation name). Here's a shot of the dock at Shearwater:

As you can see, it's a beautiful sunny day here in Northern paradise....











Last 2 nights we spent at anchor in Kakushdish Harbour, where the spirit bears supposedly hang out. We didn't see one. We didn't see any wildlife at all, except a couple of really huge, loud herons. It rained most of the time both days, so we were happy to have our anchor down in good holding mud.

To get from Ocean Falls to Kakushdish, we went through Gunboat Passage, which is kind of scary-looking when we looked at it on the charts - it's very narrow, and FULL of big rocks and nasty currents. However, everything we read says that it can be taken, and is the shortest passage to Shearwater and Bella Bella. So, since it was early and there was no wind (because it was foggy and rainy), we decided to go on through. We took it really slowly and had no problems. It was, however, scary.....the rocks are huge and completely line both banks of the passage, with lots of shoals along the way. But, we did it successfully:

And now, tomorrow morning, we're off to meet up with Mel and Bernice aboard Reel Dream out on an island in the big, bad ocean..............and we'll hope for lots and lots of halibut and ling cod!

Still in Ocean Falls, part 2

(Don't miss reading the post I just published .... I forgot something)

We're hoping that Steppe and Mary find Bruce. We're wondering if Canada has AMBER alerts for missing torpedoes.

For those of you who do not read Saratoga Sue's blog, yesterday the Canadian Navy issued an alert for boaters to be on the lookout for a runaway torpedo. Seems that Whiskey Golf (remember that?) was active, and a Canadian torpedo evidently is missing. The torpedo is not armed (so they say), but people are told not to actually fiddle with it - bad things could happen. Steppe and Mary have named the torpedo "Bruce" and think his silver picture should be on a milk carton.

Gosh, I love Canada! :)

Still in Ocean Falls

We woke up this morning to light-to-NO winds and flat calm water here in the harbor. We felt like idiots, knowing that we'd expected a storm, so decided to stay here today. Shoot. Already paid for the moorage, so doesn't make sense to leave. Oh, well, we like it here. It's fine. So Bob went out to pick up the prawn trap and the crab trap....a few more BIG prawns (shrimp on the Barbie, for sure) and some HUGE crab. We kept 3 and threw the rest back.....when you get all 8-inchers, why keep the little old 7-inch crabs???

It just turned 11:00am and THERE'S the wind! We're sitting right behind the log breakwater, watching the white caps inside the harbor - it's nuts out there. Now, we're feeling very smart and smug. Especially when we know it's crab cakes for lunch. :)

We're hoping it blows itself out tonight, so we can leave for Shearwater tomorrow. It'll be about a 5-hour run, and the first 2 hours will be in Fitzhugh Sound, so we'll need to expect some nasty wave action after all this wind today......

Stay tuned........(In the meantime, it was crab melts yesterday, crab omelets for breakfast today and crab cakes coming up for lunch. All crab, all the time.)

June 12

We're in Ocean Fall, BC, about 50 or so miles north of Rivers Inlet. We anchored in Fougner Bay on Burke Channel night before last. A really great anchorage!

Yesterday we came up here to Ocean Falls.......we're really liking it here and will stay 2 or 3 days, while a storm blows through tomorrow. Ocean Falls makes Seattle look like a desert - Seattle's annual rainfall is 37.18 - Ocean Falls' annual rainfall is 169.32! That's a lot of rain!! But it's a gorgeous sunny day today, so we're enjoying it. We pulled some big prawns out of the water this morning, and our crab pot was so full we had to throw some back. Gotta like that.

 

Here's a shot of Ocean Falls

Hard to see, but all those buildings are empty. Curtains still in the windows, and blinds, but no people. This place had a population of about 5000 until 1980, when Crown Zellerbach closed its doors - no mill, no jobs. This is an honest-to-goodness ghost town. Current population is about 25. (That may include the dog.) It's eerie to walk through the town, with all these buildings, just standing there, empty. There's a restaurant in the hotel - I wonder if they ever get guests - but you have to make reservations the day before, because they don't cook unless there's someone to cook for (which makes sense).

...and here are the Falls of Ocean Falls:

Pretty place!

Next stop, Shearwater and Bella Bella - maybe on Saturday.

 

Port McNeill, BC

I was going to put the date up in the header, then I realized I don't really know what today's date is....I do know it's Saturday. That's something.

We're in Port McNeill, where it's about 8:00am, and I'm doing laundry....$3 to wash and for $1 you get 9 minutes on the dryer....and the machines only take $1 coins.  Oops, that'd be loonies, not dollars. Anyway, laundry is a lot cheaper down here than it will be farther north, so I'm taking advantage of the extra day in port. We had a little company on our way down Johnstone Strait:

However, on a side note, Canada isn't an inexpensive place to visit....I watched a man pay $40 Cdn for a case of Budweiser. BUD, not Microbrewery beer. Good thing we're not big beer drinkers, eh? (I'm practicing my Canadian.)



Oops! Bob just told me that we're leaving right away, to catch an outgoing tide with no winds........

Sunday, June 8

Lord, watch over us. The ocean is so big and my boat is so small.

We left Deer Harbor and the USA two weeks ago today. This morning we made it around Cape Caution. We are so used to boating in Puget Sound – compared to the Midwest, where we both grew up, Puget Sound is “big water.” (Well, actually, compared to most places in the US, Puget Sound is BIG water.) After spending 3 hours in the Pacific Ocean, Puget Sound isn’t going to feel quite so big any more. We spent the night anchored in the Walker Group, a small group of rocky islands (or, actually, just really big rocks) in the Queen Charlotte Straits. At 4:00am we listened to the weather forecast from Environment Canada – specifically, the ocean buoy reports. The one we really wanted to hear was the report from the West Sea Otter Buoy, which is off Cape Caution in Queen Charlotte Sound. Unfortunately, there was no report from that buoy (so maybe someone needs to go take a look at that, guys), so we depended upon the reports from the 2 lighthouses near CC – Egg Island and Pine Island. Both of them claimed the seas were “rippled” but that’s pretty much the only thing they reported. Well, “rippled” is good enough for us, we decided, so we started out at 5:00am.(That's when I took the picture.)  After an hour into the voyage, we realized that what was missing was the state-of-the-ocean report. There were swells of about 1 meter. (oh, wait, I’m in Canada – that’s “metre”) Okay, so that’s only 39 inches, right? Yeah, well those 39 inches feels more like 39 feet when your boat is all by its little lonesome out on the briny. We saw 2 other boats while we were out there – a cruise ship bound for Alaska and some guy going south. That’s all. It was lonely out there….the fog set in, and we were just surrounded by grey – grey water, grey sky and nothing else. (Too far out to see any land, but if we could, it would’ve been grey, too. I’d have taken a picture as we went around the cape, but it’d just be a blank grey square.)  We got to Smith Sound (just north of Cape Caution) about 8:30 – and although we were in “protected” waters, it didn’t feel much different from the ocean waters. We were 5 miles from the cove where we are currently anchored, but we couldn’t see the far shore from the entrance. It’s another “big water.”

It’s raining and we’re sitting here in a little protected spot called Millbrook Cove in Smith Sound with 3 other boats. We listen to the weather reports and we’re glad we’re in here. It’s getting kind of nasty out there. On the bright side, however, this is only the first day of real rain we’ve had, which must be some kind of record for early June. As all of us Northwesterners know, summer doesn’t start before July 9, so any day that we have sun before then is a bonus.

June 9
Left Millbrook Cove this morning around 0645.....

 

The ocean swells were low, but really annoying....I'm not sure how folks handle this when they go around Cape Caution and all the way past Smith Sound and Rivers Inlet on the same day.....that's a whole lot of swells to go through in one day! We were tired of the additional 2 hours of them that we got today on our way into Rivers Inlet.

 

In about 6 weeks, this place will be FULL of sports fishermen! Rivers Inlet is where people pay big bucks to fly in and fish for Chinook. The waters are big and the fish are huge. But today, we saw only 2 people fishing (one a commercial fishing boat) and the water was calm - after we got quite a ways inside the Inlet, and away from the swells!

 

Tomorrow we'll take off from here - we're at Dawson's Landing - and head on out. Depending upon the weather (it's rainy today), we'll head up Fitzhugh Sound towards Shearwater. It should take us about 3 days to get to Shearwater and Bella Bella (they are just across from one another). We plan to stay 2 days in Shearwater. It's a fairly large settlement (about 5,000 population) with laundry, stores, etc. Actually, the store is at Bella Bella, but there is a water taxi to get there.....Bella Bella is now known as Waglisla, its First Nation name. I have no idea where "bella bella" came from, but I'll try and find out! That will be our next opportunity for Internet.

 

...and why I can't get this thing to left side justify is beyond me!



 

 

 

May 29 - June 6

May  29

We took off this morning from Comox, where we had dinner last night at my favorite place up here - the Blackfin Pub. We eat here every time we come up this far ...heck, I'd come up this far just to eat here...I had the best meat loaf I've ever tasted. Enough for lunch, too. Bob had cod that was breaded with ground up banana chIps, coconut and panko, and served with a mango curry sauce. It was fantastic....definitely on my "to try when I get home" list.

We left at 8:00 this morning, in a light fog and rain. But the water was flat calm. Crossing the Straits of Georgia this morning was downright boring. We decided against going to Campbell River, and instead came over a bit into Desolation Sound. We remembered a place called Gorge Harbour from 7 years ago....so we went in and then we remembered why we've never been back....there's no place to anchor. So we left and came over to Rebecca Spit, which is on Quadra Island. We're tired of going 5 hours every day, so we're staying here a couple of days. We're anchored in 50' of water, just off the beach.....and here's a picture of the beach.....

On Saturday, we'll go through Surge Narrows and into the Octopus Islands. I bought some steaks and salad stuff while in Comox, so we will grill them for my birthday dinner.

Ahhh, peace and contentment.

May 30

It is a glorious morning here on Rebecca Spit..

 I imagine that this place is hopping later in the summer, but for now, it's just us and 3 sailboats enjoying the calm and quiet. Our solar panels are keeping the fridge and freezer going great, so there's no reason to go anywhere near a Marina. Yay! Today will be a hand
wash day since it looks like lots of sun to dry some clothes.....we'll see how well I do with jeans...on the bright side, the dryer won't shrink them. :)

Now that I've exclaimed over the beauty of the day, I'll just say "Bad rice! Bad rice!" There, don't want to jinx it.

...And the boat quilt that was 9 years in the making is finished. Looks good on Nellie.

May 31

Happy Birthday to me!

I did no wash yesterday, since we both have plenty of clean clothes. I'll wait until we get desperate.

We came through Hoskyn Channel into the  Octopus Islands. It's been on our "places to visit" list for a few years. It can only be reached by going through tidal rapids, which can be tricky. We are entering from the south, so well only go through one rapids - on our way out we'll go through at least 2.

Cheated Death one more time! We went through the rapids about 20 minutes before slack water, and we were okay....a little rough, especially when the tide rips caught our stern, but we're through, and sitting at anchor in lovely Waiatt Bay....just us and 3 other boats. Nice. As Daddy used to say when he felt that all was right in his world, "Wonder what the poor people are doing tonight." (That's probably really a bad thing to say, so I'll just apologize for my "uncouth-ness" now.)

June 2

Cheated Death again by going through Upper Rapids on Okisollo Channel at 0800 this morning. Gale winds are expected at Chatham Point today through Tuesday, so we've dropped the anchor in Owen Bay, just northeast of the Octopus Islands and will probably stay here until Wednesday. If it's still blowing hard we'll backtrack and go through Hole in the Wall to the Yuculta Rapids and go through the Broughtons to get to Port McNeill.

Later.....The winds blew us back into Waiatt Bay, where we feel much more secure....so, by going through Upper Rapids twice in one day, we've really cheated Death!

June 5
After 3 days in Waiatt Bay, yesterday we went through hole in the Wall and spent the night at anchor in Von Donop Bay, on Cortes Island. We passed "Karens Rock" on the way in....named by me after I hit it (just grazed it, honest) going in in 2010. There is a house-sized rock in the center of a narrow passage, and I was so careful not to hit it that I forgot about the shoaling rocks on the side. Oh, well, win some, lose some.

We left Von Donop this morning and came through the Yuculta Rapids, finishing up in Forward Harbour at 3:00pm. I realize now that 7 hours is beyond my tolerance for boredom. We are hoping for light winds in Johnstone Strait tomorrow so we can get to Port McNeill. I am ready to get off Nellie for a walk!