Voyaging back through British Columbia history

Between rapids 3 and 4 spent tied up at the small public dock at Shoal Bay, which was founded in 1887. There was a gold mine near by and the usual fishing and logging industry so the town grew quickly to 5,000 souls, at the time bigger than Vancouver. Then it faded away.
The area recently purchased by latter day homesteader and year-rounder, Mark MacDonald. Mark is completely gung ho. There was a modern lodge on the property when he bought it but it burned down. So he simply started over again. He and his summer helpers are building innovative small buildings: at the moment they have a cottage, a washhouse with laundry and showers, the A frame pub to the left of the picture, a green house, a workshop and a splendid new outhouse! There's also a pit for smoking salmon and roasting meat. The pub has no food and only four kinds of drink: lager, ale; red wine and white wine.
But the fish jump out of the Bay so that people get dinner without leaving their boats. The garden is simply beautiful: everyone is invited to do a bit of work and harvest the crop. We returned leafy lettuce, three potatoes, a badly needed onion and bunches of herbs richer. There's a small can in the garden if one wishes to leave a donation. In the middle of the garden is the chicken coop. New hens and a rooster arrived the day we left; a marten who had slaughtered their predecessors had been captured. In the morning at low tide I joined the crew on the beach and helped in the inch by inch moving of old ironwood sinker logs under the dock. These will be a way, one of these slop structures upon which ships are launched or hauled out and repaired. Just the week before the community had repaired a hole in the hull of a malfunctioning swing keel sailboat by pulling it all the way up on the beach. These folks cruise through life, solving problems as they come.

They also have fun. Some folks from Gibbons who stayed for the Saturday night pig roast said it was a blast. Do it yourself entertainment included everything from magic and belly dancing to male stripping. On the 16, Shoal Bay hosts its annual music festival where folks camp and make the music themselves.

Then there was Port Neville. After our harrowing trip up the Johnstone Strait in a modest 25 knots but 25 knots right in out faces and against the current we sought refuse in Port Neville, which sounds like a settlement but is actually a fjord explored and named i 1792 by Captain George Vancouver. It has excellent anchorage both at its further reaches and near the windswept mouth that looks out on the Strait. It's near the mouth that a public wharf leads to a tiny settlement of three families, which is also named Port Neville. Lorna Hansen Chesluk, the postmistress who sold us a cruising guide we were missing, is the granddaughter of the fist homesteader who came from Norway to settle there in 1891.

Heavenly Bodies

This weekend has been made slightly more dramatic by spring tides, the very low and very high ones caused by full moons and new moons.

This new moon has brought not only extraordinary seas beneath us but awe-inspiring skies over our heads.

As the light disappeared over Port Neville, Venus appeared. I've never seen Venus look like this! Solidly round. Like a silver dollar. Or a mirror, clearly not burning, but reflecting.

After a simple bowl of the stew I'd made ahead while Jack was doing the route planning, I grabbed a sleeping bag and settled down for a night on deck. I figured I'd keep an eye on the anchor and the stars at the same time. What a show! The stars blazed down to the black horizon all around. In their midst was the Milky Way, really milky, with an infinite depth, a third dimension of stars I'd never ever seen that way.

There's no electricity here. No generators. The soft light of lamps in the only two cottages for miles and miles had long been extinguished. So I was puzzled when I opened my eyes to check on the transit of Venus and the stars and found them dimmed by what appeared to be ambient light. So I pulled my weary body up on an elbow and had a look around. There miles away in the middle of Johnstone Strait a southbound cruise ship glowed like a gaudy toy.

We've Run the Rapids!

We finished off the rapids to the Broughtons on August 3. Here's how we did it. Jack spent a good part of the day before studying tide tables, poring over a new set of 1:20,000 charts, and packing them carefully in the zipable Hefty Bags recommended by his friend the Armchair Sailor.

At 5:30 am the day of departure I was sitting in the aft cabin berth with my coffee and the four charts laid out on the feather comforter. Jack gave an overview of the plan and, with my mind morning-fresh, I came to terms with it and saw it should work.

We shoved off at 9 am so we could cover the distance up Cordero Channel and arrive at the Green Point Rapids exactly at low water slack, just as the ebb out turned to the flow in. We rounded Green Point along with a fishing schooner. A piece of cake. Best of all we missed sharing the rapids with a huge log boom pilled by a powerful tug with a smaller tug bringing up the rear.

Our next challenge was Whirlpool Rapids, which we would take on the next slack, the high water slack. It was a spectacularly sunny day so rather than sailing aimlessly around Jack suggested anchoring for lunch in the sun followed by a long nap. We could see the clouds against the high mountains of Vancouver Island that border Johnstone Straight (see photo) but we were in good weather.
In Charlie's Charts. cruising author Margo Wood recommends dropping anchor in a small bay off Chancellor Channel just before it meets Wellbore Channel. Alas, we poked around the shores but with the exception of tiny bay with a crab pot smack in the middle, all the bottoms we over 100 feet. We'll have to complain to Margo if we see her at the Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival in September.

So we headed up Wellbore Channel, where the flood was already underway and backeddies made our progress difficult. But just before the rapids was a calm crescent beach with a sialboat already moored. We dropped anchor and had a leisurely lunch in the hot sun followed by naps. I took mine on deck under a sun hat with my fleece neck gaiter - yes, we still don snow pants and fleece dickies - protecting my lower lip from sunburn. Delicious.

We took the Whirlpool Rapids at dead slack as well, though it was a flood slack. Nothing to report except a lone fisherman in an open boat perhaps 15 feet long. We waved, reminded of our friend Don Wisham who died this past year doing what he love most - fishing. Evidently he stepped into a hole while fly fishing in wadders off the banks of Oregon's Deschutes River.

Just beyond this final set of rapids is an inlet called Forward Harbor where we'd considered dropping the hook. But there wasn't wasn't a cloud in the sky and we were completely refreshed with naps so we headed on into Sunderland Channel, expecting to make Port Neville well before nightfall. Again our estimated time of arrival was short. As we entered the infamous Johnstone Strait, the wind hit us full force in the face. We motored laboriously on.

We had a couple of encounters with drift. A log 2 feet in diameter and many feet long spun past on port. I impulsively grabbed my camera to photograph it only to hear the thump of a much smaller long as it hit starboard. Another lesson well learned. Drift follows drift. From then on I squinted into the blinding sun looking for the stuff.

The only other boat underway we saw all afternoon was a small speedy vessel that bounced up and down along the south shore. We passed a single safehaven just large enough for one boat: and it was already taken.

When we finally reached Port Neville - a long finger of a bay - the sun was setting orange, making the long bunches of eel grass easy to see. There being no place at the public wharf, we anchored out.

How to Read a Nautical Chart

This is the title of one of the best books I've ever read. It's the sort of thing that Suart Brand would've given rave reviews in the Whole Earth Catalogue if the book had been written then. You know, technical savvy meets universal interest. Before we had listserves dishing up readings in areas of interest we're supposed to be keeping up with. In fact, this is a book that was crying to be written before a sharp editor begged Nigel Calder to write it.

This book is for everybody, especially anybody with the slightest curiosity about cartography. Or risk assessment. Or exploration. Or hydrographic methods. Or international cooperation. Or epistemology. In fact, if you're in Portlamd, you should trot right down to Powell's Technical Books, get yourself a cup of coffee and read the section entitled "The Limits of Accuracy."

Now if you're a navigator, this will be an adrenalin rush. It's pretty great to read stuff it's esential to know and have it be thrilling at the same time. I happened to read it at anchor in Laura Cove sitting on on deck with a tremendous view across the entrance into the Desolation Sound. And lo and behold there immeidately in front of me was a perfectly good rock that had varied in height with the tide between one and 11 feet! And it wasn't even on our large scale ie. small area official Canadian Map that you legally have to have on board! Yikes.

On dinghies, kayaks, scooter and bikes

These are extenders and how many you carry is determined by space, time and budget. While a sailboat can get pretty close to the forested shores of the coast islands, there is always some water to cross.

Fitted out with the inflatable Dinghy Dogs, T/T (ie Tender To) Aurora is serving us well this year. A product purveyed by one of thousands of entrepreneurial, problem-solving, nautical inventors, Dinghy Dogs have bridged differing views the Skipper and the First Mate.

When the Skipper steps off the deck and into the dinghy he wants a fairly solid landing, not the teetering of a canoe. In fact, he long made the case for buying a bulky, expensive inflatable. As for the First Mate, she wants something she can actually row, particularly on longer excursions, when the electric motor runs out of juice. And she's always liked the traditional rowboat design and the way the existing dinghy fits perfectly on the deck.

Enter Dinghy Dogs, inflatable hotdogs six feet long. They simply lash on to gunwale cleats and are kept from popping up by a slotted band at the waterline. Jack the Skipper can actually relax on excursions into the nooks and crannies of the coast and the First Mate still has her classic (if plastic) rowboat.
A lot of cruisers haul a dinghy and have kayaks on deck. The kayaks may be rigid or inflatable. The simplest inflatables resemble blow up lounge chairs. A couple of sailors in this type paddled up just we we squeezing into a particularly tight anchorage and poked around with their paddles to confirm we had the necessary depth. Then they left on wind power: each put up a folding umbrella!

Our decks are uncluttered with extender paraphenalia but stowed in the port lazarette is my everyday bike and in the starboard one, Jack's scooter. The bike is a folding Dahon and the scooter breaks down into five easy pieces so they both can be transported in the dinghy, though not necessarily at once.

Swing? Or Tie Up?

We've been able to do a lot of swinging but last night was my first tie up. Behind Jean Island we dropped our anchor in a 25 foot deep hole very close to shore and just swung with the winds, currents, and tides. The next morning we got up to find ourselves surrounded on three sides with small islands - or rather a bunch of drying rocks - some 7 feet high - that appear at low tide. Over coffee we realized that from time to time something resembling thunder was coming from the v-berth. Ah ha! The grumbling rumbling was just the anchor chain echoing up through the locker as it dragged over rocks protruding from the muddy bottom over which we were swinging in a complete circle.

But swinging doesn't always work. Prideaux Haven is a much coveted anchorage where snow capped peaks preside over a series of small sheltered coves. As we searched for the entrance, we could see masts above the hills and boat through the nooks and crannies. We would have to anchor and then tie up using a stern tie. For the first time.

Without a nylon stern tie per se we'd have to use a length of line that we'd dropped on the very bottom of the starboard lazarette to create a floor for the fenders, tie lines, extra life jackets and bike. Out everything came and then the line. Oodles of it. Obviously it had been purchased on the drum wholesale; it's already being used for the jib sheets. Fortunately, the task of unsnarling the 3/4 inch line and laying it out on the deck was quick and easy. I counted approximately 275 feet of the stuff which I divided into three bunches.

Finally we were entering Laura Cove, which was already busy. The crew of an anchored sailboat guided us to avoid a mid channel obstruction while some kayakers suggested laying the hook toward in the middle of the cove. Once I'd dropped the anchor and let out some rode as Jack motored slowly toward shore, I had to do the stern tie. Under the eyes of everyone of course. Just getting a hugely slippery skein of 3/4 inch line into the dinghy was a challenge. Then after tying the bitter end to Aurora's stern, I had to row to shore, climb up a cliff of slimy rocks, haul the line up to a tree, loop it around and get it back down to the dinghy. By that time an oar had gone AWOL so I returned to the Aurora by pulling one half of the line while letting out the other. Tied up. Made. We only needed about 80 feet but - this line worth a small fortune - we don't want to cut it. After paddling out to retrieve the wayward oar, we sat down to bowls of chili, feeling rather proud of ourselves.

Here is a picture of our next door neighbor, properly tied up with a thin stern tie. This great old wooden vessel was the biggest boat in the cove and could only get in and out on high tide.

There will be more stories of anchoring to come, I'm sure. It is something fraught with challenge, always an adrenalin rush. Much can go wrong. So far, nothing has.

Gunkholing in Desolation Sound

We pulled up anchor at the crack of dawn to sail up the the Sunshine Coast and into the wilderness of Desolation Sound. Normally the winds tunneling through Malespina Strait between the mainland and the spiny baked monster island of Taxeda are from the North, but on this day they were with behind us. We flew north on a broad reach slowing only at the top of the Strait, where we got a nice look at the historic town of Powell River, a few miles beyond its bustling, mundane sister, Westview. The whole town of Powell River has been designated a National Historic District, one of Canada's very few. Through binoculars we could see the rows of pretty craftsman houses and the town center with churches and schools. The lumber mill of this company town founded in 1910 still billows steam and all the houses appear tidy and inhabited This is a place we need to visit. Powell River has a history museum, a logging museum and a fully restored theater which dates from the days of theater organists accompanying silent and still shows movies every night.

Civilization ends at the Swedish settlement of Lund, whose majestic old hotel overlooks the water. It's here that Route 101, already patched together by ferry crossings, peters out in a brief dirt track.

Desolation Sound, so named in 1792 by the gloomy George Vancouver, combines grandeur with a cozy intimacy with the natural world. While snow capped peaks drop majestically into the Pacific, endlessly winding miles of shoreline shelter tiny all-to-yourselves anchorages. We found one such behind Jean Island near the entrance to Grace Harbor in Desolation Sound Marine Park. We could not believe the silence. Loons crying from miles away. The ripples made by a family of a yet to be identified family of ducks. The flap of the wings of a bald eagle as he left his forest perch above our mast.

In the daytime there are the sounds of oyster farmers' boats, the occasional float plane reuniting a passenger with family or colleagues, and other cruisers. But there are no overhead wires or signs or mooring docks and buoys or even navigational aids apart from an occasional plastic ball marking an obstruction. Gunkholing is the nautical equivalent of backpacking before the days of permits and designated campsites. On Cortez Island, we returned to Gorge Harbor, where we'd been with Acquitted in 2006. It's a large bay all but enclosed save for a very narrow but deep and safe set of cliffs. This year we again entered in low tide and were treated to a a show of jewel tone colors: bright pink, purple and orange starfish on a bed of bright green seaweed on the rock.