Although we were experiencing
steady rain in Bishop Bay, Cash and I took the dinghy to the hot springs for a
morning soak. Linda decided there must
be something wrong with us to put on bathing suits and go out into a cool rain
to get into the hot springs and passed on the effort.
Departing Bishop Bay was both
exhilarating and depressing for us. As
Cash was driving out from the bridge, we suddenly heard him stomp up and down
on the deck. Rushing outside we saw a
humpback leaping into the air. I rushed
back inside to get my camera and tried to take a picture when it jumped again –
no luck. No luck on a third jump. I then figured out that the camera was set on
the infrared 2 second time delay I used for the warm springs picture. Two more jumps and I got pictures. Unfortunately, when I inspected them, they
were fuzzy – I had forgotten to change the speed from 1/100 th of a
second to 1/1000 th of a second when I put the telephoto zoom on. While I got some pictures, albeit poor ones,
Cash didn’t have his camera at all. This
may have been a once in a lifetime shot that was blown.
The scenery down Princess
Royal Channel was steep surrounding mountains and a large number of
waterfalls. It would have been gorgeous
except that the wind rarely blew less than 12 knots gusting 15 and, by the time
we arrived at Khutze, was nearly 20 gusting 25.
Along the way we pulled over for an hour to explore Butedale where a
cannery and associated buildings once stood but is now slowly sliding into the
water. A caretaker is still there to
protect the remaining dilapidated structures from “those up to no good”. The dock is so rickety that I am surprised it
hasn’t been condemned by the authorities; part of it is made of tree stumps. While there we took a hike into the woods to
find a flue built to channel water down to a now defunct generator. As best we could, we also toured the other structures.
The first activity at Khutze
was to set out some crab pots using salmon heads for bait. The second activity was to vacuum seal four
of the five salmon we caught and cleaned two days ago. The Chinook was left out for eating. When the vacuum sealing was done we then had
to deal with the freezer in the refrigerator (we couldn’t put another prawn in
the one on the bridge). First we removed
all of the remaining store bought food and put it in the refrigerator. Then Cash jammed in what packages he could
into the freezer and built an unstable wall of packages right in front of the
door. I held the packages in place while
Cash closed the door except for the last few inches. On the count of 3, I jerked my hands out and
Cash shut the freezer door. The door is now
latched and may not be opened again until we get home. Any sea food we catch from now on will have
to be eaten fresh.
Cash and I figured that our tally
so far is:
Species
|
Cash
|
Wally
|
Chinook (King)
|
3
|
|
Coho (Silver)
|
11
|
1
|
Sockeye
|
2
|
4
|
Pink
|
9
|
4 (2 released)
|
Total Salmon
|
25
|
9
|
Halibut
|
4
|
1
|
Rockfish
|
1
|
1
|
Starry flounder
|
1
|
|
Cutthroat trout
|
1
|
Since I caught 27 salmon on our trip to Alaska in 2011, Cash believes he has to catch at least 3 more before we get home which will give him a total of at least 28.
As has been our past
experience, Khutze is a wonderful place to catch large crab. Every crab we caught was a male and most were
over 7 inches wide; well above the 6 1/2 inch legal minimum. We caught our limit of 6 crabs each. As noted above, all newly caught seafood has
to be eaten fresh. Consequently, the
buckets to store crabs over the side were pulled out and the bait tank with
flow through sea water was set up for when we are underway.
The large waterfall at Khutze
has always been inviting, but I’ve never walked up to it. Today Cash and I took the dinghy over and hiked
up the creek to get close. Cash got so
close he took his shirt off and stuck his head under the icy water – this is
snow melt, it’s cold. I experimented
with my neutral density filters and got the following shot of the waterfall and
stream.
During our second afternoon
at Khutze we decided to take the dinghy up the Khutze River as far as it was
navigable. Twice we encountered small
grizzly bears and hovered only 50 – 75 feet away to watch them feed on grass;
they seemed totally oblivious to us. It
seems counter intuitive that an important part of grizzly bear food is grass
which they graze on for hours on end. These
are probably the two 2-year old bears we saw with their mother during our trip
up in May.
We have been boating in
British Columbia for over 30 years. While
at Khutze I asked Linda which of British Columbia’s boating destinations she
liked best. After some thought she
decided that this honor fell to Princess Louisa with Khutze coming in a close
second. We are in agreement on the top
two destinations; however, I would place Khutze as my favorite. In addition to the spectacular scenery which
includes a waterfall with its soothing sound, it has bears, great crabbing, and
gives you a greater sense of privacy even if other boats are present.
July 31, Rescue Bay
Ground fog greeted us as we
sadly pulled anchor in Khutze Inlet and continued our journey south. We’d like to come back here and spend a
week. Fortunately, the fog soon cleared
and we continued down Princess Royale Channel with the sun shining, almost no
wind, and a one knot current pushing us along.
We had planned to spend the
night in the First Nations town of Klemtu and did pull over to their public
dock. Unfortunately, we found that both
grocery stores had nearly empty shelves and there was no water on the
dock. After only an hour we decided to
push off and head towards Shearwater for another couple of hours. Rescue Bay at the east end of Jackson Passage
is a nice and convenient stopping place.
This was the warmest day of our cruise with the temperature climbing
into the middle 70s.
Tonight was the second clear
night since Cash joined us. The first
time was in Juneau where city lights eliminated the possibility of a star
shot. Tonight Cash set my camera up on a
(bear free) rock in the wee hours of the morning and programmed it to shoot 30
second shots continually until the battery went dead (ISO 4000, f7). He then used Photoshop to combine them into
one star trails photo.
August 1, Shearwater
The heat is with us! Another bright sunny day in the middle 70s
caused me to take down the front of the bridge enclosure so cool air could flow
through. A high pressure ridge has
formed outside of Haida Gwaii and Vancouver Islands. It’s hard to believe that literally just a
few miles from us gale warnings are out while it is almost dead calm through
the Inside Passage. As we got close to
Shearwater I called for a slip and found that they were full. We went there anyway to top off the water
tank and buy gasoline for the dinghy.
With those tasks done we decided to try for a dock spot at New Bella
Bella just a few miles away. No dock
space there either, but we were allowed to stay at the fuel dock long enough to
buy groceries.
Back to Shearwater where we
tied Hobbit up to a rickety breakwater not quite as bad as the dock at Butedale,
but almost, then took the dinghy to shore to do some exploring.
August 2-3, Pruth Bay, Hakai Beach Institute
It was a delightful run from
Shearwater to Pruth Bay except when we passed in front of Hakai Passage. There you could believe the weather reports
of gale force winds and heavy seas off the coast. We were getting 15 to 20 knots of wind but,
fortunately, only about 2 foot seas; there was just enough of an angle to the
wind relative to Hakai Passage so that the fetch was limited.
Loacated at Pruth Bay is the
privately funded Hakai Beach Institute which supports research in a wide
variety of fields. They welcome visitors
and even offer free Internet. One of the
delightful aspects of Pruth Bay is taking a walk across Calvert Island to a
sandy ocean-front beach. The three of us
took the easy hike to the west beach then continued on the somewhat more
arduous hike to the north beach which borders Hakai Pass.
August 4, Fury Cove
Most of the trip from Pruth
Bay to Fury Cove was in the fog. Joining
us at this jumping off spot for rounding Cape Caution on the open ocean journey
to Queen Charlotte Strait were 16 other boats.
The few I talked with either here or at Pruth Bay are somewhat
apprehensive of this crossing because the three desired parameters (wind,
swell, and fog) don’t align well. Wind
is the most important parameter and, if we don’t make the trip tomorrow or
Sunday, we’re likely to be stranded on this side of the Cape for many days.
Fury Cove is a beautiful
albeit crowed anchorage with a direct view of the Pacific Ocean. Cash took the dinghy to one of the sandy
beaches to just wander around.
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