The troubles with fjords

The Fiordland area has been more or less set aside from logging, and many of the rivers still seem intact. At Culpepper Lagoon, we paddled up the river at high tide and explored a bit.

Most of the anchorages in this area are exceedingly tight tidal bottlenecks and we ripped through one lagoon entrance at 10.1 knots in Oystercatcher).  Notice the relief on Blain's face after navigating these rapids.

Yeah.

Our charts have been less than helpful in places, but the cruising guides have filled in the slack. Thanks goodness for radar and GPS, though. One crossing out of the Grenville Channel was completely fogbound and we couldn't see 100 yards. The reefs and rocks showed up clearly on both gadgets, and we were relieved to have the extra "eyes". Many of theses areas still have not been mapped. Too remote and too little economic possibility, we suppose. And that's good too. It's all good.

Timing is everything and we've had to hover a few times to wait for the current to slack. One called Kent Harbor was a granite boulder-strewn maze. But we were too busy watching the sides and shallow rock ledges underneath the keel to get any photos.

Crabbing has been good, as has the shrimping, but we're out of those tastey little shrimp baits that Chance goes gaga for. Delicious crab omelettes and sushi. And fresh Dungeness crab croquettes - nothing like it. We decided we will be writing up some of our favorite recipes for folks. Or at least for us later.

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Laredo Inlet. See it. It's on Princess Royal Island and is still gorgeous and untrammeled.

We listened to a wolf howl through the night and enjoyed the remoteness. We'll work to get it the video uploaded.

Finally, we found a yew. A western yew tree taxus brevifolia. These slow growing beautiful forest denizens are highly prized for their strong flexible wood - think English longbows and other strong bendy things. They have wonderful medicinal properties and a promising anti-cancer drug is found in their bark. However, there is some concern they might be too highly prized for their own good. Anyway, we were glad to find a few happily growing on a slope amongst their old-growth brethern (or sisteren - they are either one or the other -i.e. dioecious).

After Prince Rupert, it's on to Ketchikan and ALASKA!!!

The upper coast of BC. Yah gotta be here.

We sit in a rolly Prince Rupert Royal Yacht Club docks, tied to the world for a while. A repair again. Gotta love the sailing life. But we're also enjoying the city life again. Cars are a real novelty, as are french fries.

It's been a while. In the last month, we've been watching out for the cruising kitty, so haven't stayed in any marinas since Dawson's Landing. So we're a little unsocialized.

We covered hundreds of miles through Fiordland Provincial Rec Area, soaked in a couple of hot springs, and learned a few cooking skills. We just watched our engine turn over to 4000 hours, so we're definately motoring much more than sailing in these inside passages. On the flip side, we've been better at going with the tidal currrents to get a push and save diesel.

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During the last new moon, the tides were big, and we did a lot of poking around at low tides. We've found some remarkable creatures. Here, let us introduce some of them.

This nudibranch was our first we'd ever seen. We had no idea they were so big. About the size and texture of those big orange-slice gummy candies. But a whole lot more charismatic...

 Some others were the hairy chiton (yes that's seaweed growing on it) and the bat star. The latter smells like sulphur and was in the shrimp trap.

 

Another visitor included this young dishevelled Brewer's black bird in a foggy rain storm.

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On to the hot springs. Life is good soaking in the rain or sun in hot water on a rocky shore. It's really crazy how apey humans get over finding water slightly warmer than body temperature and sitting in it. But why fight it. Our first stop was Bishop's Bay where you can tie to another boat at the dock. This was great.

We rafted to a very reluctant Bayliner from Terrace, BC who admitted they we're worried about it. We decided we were probably their worst rafting nightmare. A sailboat even, and of course, did we say we have a dog?

The boat owner got out his wash broom right after we walked across his back deck the first time. We noticed he gave up after a few more shore trips by us. They also admitted that they usually don't come to this hot springs because they are sooo busy. There were a TOTAL of 5 boats. And they pointed out that three were American. American! Can you believe it?! I soothed his troubled mind by explaining that we weren't here to just take all the fish, but we Americans were also making plans to turn the hot springs into money-making resort ventures. Oh, and to steal all the women.

Boats and boaters have been stopping and writing their names on the walls and leaving carvings in the rafters. We decorated a japanese float we'd found and hung it on the ceiling.

Somebody had set a campfire on the boardwalk or other such stupid thing, so there was a section burned to a crisp and cobbled together. We hope it is rebuilt soon.

 

After this we motored up to Europa Bay Hot Springs. More remote and mooring bouys to tie up to, we shared this wonderful place with two fishing boats. One boat had his son fly out in his float plane so he could get the newspaper and sports scores.

 

We thoroughly enjoyed the soaks. Though once again the view was marred by old clearcuts. You'd think the Canadian government would have set aside some land around the hot springs from logging. But I'm sure they have little control over them from the conversations we've had with their contrymen. I can imagine the loggers were just as excited as us to soak off the grime and probably kept them a secret if they could.

Our first real Japanese culinary masterpiece was shrimp sushi here. We made it with 21 of the biggest spot prawns we've caught so far. The processing was a lot of fun. Skewer, boil, cool, unskewer, peel, butterfly cut, make a nigiri (vinegered rice bottom layer) and press it together. Artfully arrange (we need more work on this part, but by this time, we were really hungry), and enjoy with wasabi, pickled ginger, and soy sauce.

 
 
 
 
 
 
If you aren't hungry yet, maybe the tofu paneer cheese and veggie shish kabobs will get you.

 

To Namu and the ghosts of the middle coast

Here Blain tries on the latest in beach fashions on the Hakai Coast. Urchin hats.

We did let it go after this photo shoot.

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To Namu we go. The rain kept at it, but lovely abandoned Namu - a cannery town was a lot of fun to see. The caretaker showed us around and let us wander. Mo made the comment that this was a tinkers fantasy island. It had so much cool junk laying around. Blain got bar-envy when he spotted this mighty Husqevarna laying around. The real men of this coast actually cut their firewood with these babies.  

The "girls" of Namu beautified it all up.

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One interesting bay we anchored in near Shearwater was called Kushkudish Bay, and we rowed out to this sweet little waterfall on the basalt cliff.

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Up Dean Channel to Alexander MacKenzie's monument and the hot springs. MacKenzie painted this stone at the end of his epic walk across the continent in 1793. Funny, but he only missed Vancouver's expedition by about a month in the same spot. That's why e-mail was invented.

Buy Blain a beer one day and ask him to explain what was the significance of this photo.

Cinco de Mayo came and we celebrated by making tamales. Black bean, peppers and feta. Aiyiyiyii.

We set the shrimp pot off a waterfall hoping for a few, and the next day pulled the pot up to find some of the largest monsters we've ever seen. Note the regular sized vs the super sized version. Lobster really.

Around the corner, Eucott Bay hot springs were fantastic. We could live there. This remarkable hot springs jewel in the middle of granite spires and jade waters. However, as a blaringly bad example of environmental stewardship, they allowed two forested clearcuts right across the bay. Nice job Canada.

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On to Ocean Falls. A strange deserted industry town with a massive dam in the middle of it. The former residents have taken care of a few structures and this panel van shows the latest town map. Though as Blain's old boss George Dickison used to say - a map isn't a map without a north arrow, legend, and scale bar. So it's back to the Ocean Falls GIS team for a new one.

The fire hall had a nice boat-shaped concrete patio, but was equally in need of some municipal funding.

Up the dam. Wow. That's a big hydro power dam. Too bad nobody's around to turn on a light.

The marine ways looked to be freshly inhabited, and actually had a craft store in it. Not open, and no customers, though.

After this it's back to Shearwater to see if we have mail, then northbound again.Fjordland, Klemtu, and eventually Prince Rupert.