Friday, June 29, 2007 Dawson’s Landing, Rivers Inlet BC
If you would like a chronological rendering of this information, please print out these pages, and cut and paste. We don’t have ‘Puter (the Toshiba laptop computer we borrowed from Jolie and Joe) out every day. He spends his days under the covers in the aft cabin where there is less chance of Bounce and Heel, both of which bother him greatly. But now he is out because There Is Nothing to Do; we are tied to a dock in the pouring rain at the end of the known would.
We rounded Cape Caution at 8:15 this morning. How did we get there? The last time I “chronicled” we were heading into the Johnstone Straits. Johnstone Straits are known for their Maytag Effect: Lots of suds, and no dry cycle. Since the weather forecast was favorable, we decided to ignore the safer route through Green and Whirlpool Rapids that dumps you out into the straits further west. After carefully reading our books, we decided to spend the night at Port Harvey “the best anchorage on the Straits” (in a field of two). As we neared our destination, Doug pointed out that we were making 7.3 knots speed-over-ground (no snickering) and we could be in Port McNeill by 7:30 and it was light until 10:00…. I suddenly felt young again; just like when we were first married and drove back from Yellowstone almost non-stop, or drove to Salem for pizza with Kip and Kay and back the same evening. Don’t ask me why Doug assumed the current and wind would maintain their direction and velocity. They did not, but we were anchored (no room at the dock) by 8:00 that night.
Port McNeill is a lumber and fishing town suffering from the depression in those two industries. But they like Yachties, and have good services including a NEW LAUNDROMAT. The last time we were here, the laundromat was in a broken-down building with broken-down equipment, but we met two helicopter loggers there, and talking with them made it well worth the wait. This time, CNN was on the telly in the immaculate Laundromat, and we had fee Internet access. Which to I like better? Some people are never happy.
We crossed Queen Charlotte Straits the next morning and spent the night in Allison Harbor on the mainland, the last anchorage before rounding Cape Caution. As soon as we anchored, the wind came up and we watched carefully to see if Mr. Anchor was actually planning to stay where we thought he should. It is not often that you get to do this while it is still light; usually the wind comes up in the middle of the night.
Anchoring: We have an original-equipment anchor windlass and a new-last-year 45-pound anchor. Windwalker came with (and still has) a 33 pound Bruce anchor which is now our back-up anchor. Mr. 45 Pound Anchor (did I say that the is Very Handsome and knows it?) is connected to his mom by 300 feet of chain. We always think kind thoughts about the windlass when we ask him to do anything since he is not longer young and we know how that feels. Anchoring entails circling round while the depth sounder tells us what is beneath the keel, and then lowering Mr. Anchor and backing the boat. Doug and I wear our Toys ‘R Us walkie-talkies; we don’t have to yell, but still get to use bad words. So afar this has worked well. Stay tuned.
We were told to listen to on the Weather Channel 3 (no Steve Poole here) for the “sea stat” at West Sea Otter Buoy in order to know if we had a big enough “window” to round Cape Caution and cross Queen Charlotte Sound, one of the two big bodies of open water on the Inside Passage. If the sea sate was less than 1.5 meters and the predicted winds for Small Craft Warnings or lower, rounding the Cape should be fine. On Friday morning, West Sea Otter sea state was 1.0, and Windwalker motored around the cape with no wind and no problems, just moderate seas …COMING ALL THE WAY FROM JAPAN. Can you tell that I was impressed?
Part of the intrigue of this region for us is the history of both the First Peoples and the white settlers, and we’ve identified some places we don’t want to miss. After rounding Cape Caution, we took the second right and headed for Dawson’s Landing in Rivers Inlet, one of the places on the list. The fact that no one answered our VHF call, there were NO boats tied up, and it looked deserted, was a bit disconcerting, but they were open, and we tied up just at the next six-hour rainstorm hit. Their supply barge was more than a week overdue, fishing season was starting Next week, and they had no smoked salmon. The place looked very sad and needy, but, as Waggoner Cruising Guide says, it is a capturing of coastal history before your eyes.
We read books, took naps, and listened to their the German Shepard bark at fish and seals. Rob, the owner who grew up there, told me that when he was a kid, (the store has been in his family since 1954) the lights from the commercial fish boats in the bay made it look like Vancouver, without Stanley Park, obviously. He’s not sure what the future holds.
About 11:00 that night, the supply tug and barge arrived and proceeded to off-load cargo. The next day, Nola, Rob’s wife, related the saga of the barge company. The Crown has awarded the contract to serve the various fish camps and settlements to the lowest bidder. According to Nola, this owner doesn’t maintain his equipment, pays low wages, and works his crews hard. They lost a barge (but not the crew) a few weeks earlier when the green crew decided the seas were too rough, and turned the tug around. No one told the barge, which proceed to run over the tug. The barge in now on the rocks, along with someone’s order. That ain’t no way to run a railroad. Nola had more stories, but the gist of it is that all of the fish camps (with plans to open between July 2nd and 9th) need their supplies (all of which are delivered to Dawson’s Landing) and have no way to get them in a timely manner, if at all. I thought the situation sounded perilous, but Nola seemed calm. If you live in this environment, I think you guess wait for what happens next.
Now it is Canada Day, Sunday, July 1st, and we’re anchored in Pruth Bay on Calvert Island, recommend by Ed and Judy, as well as other Inside Passage Experts. At the head of the bay is Hakai Beach Resort, a beautifully maintained fly-in fishing lodge with handsome red metal-roofed buildings and lots of rules. (The same barge and tug arrived this afternoon.#025). We carefully walked across the resort grounds to the trail leading to a “spectacular fine-fine sand ocean beach” and then went for an explore on the inland waters in Ratty.
We decided to investigate what we thought was an abandoned cannery, but as we got closer, it was apparent that it was not abandoned and was not a cannery. It was another fish camp, but very different from Hakai Beach Resort. Hakai Beach Resort will open tomorrow and there were men working on the buildings and grounds, who said “hello”, but were not welcoming. As we neared Hakai Lodge (no beach here, it is anchored to the wall) a workman invited us to tie up and have a cup of coffee. (042)There were five or six men working on the Boston Whalers on the docks. We tied up Ratty, and another worker said, “Coffee is in that building.” A man wearing a Hakai Lodge shirt approached us and, introducing himself as Byron, invited us (again) to have coffee, and led us into the one of the buildings where people were unpacking boxes. These people were outgoing, welcoming, and interested in having someone share their coffee, which was quite good. They all arrived about three days ago and will open in a week. Byron gave us a tour, told us the history of the Hakai Beach Resort that was bought out of bankruptcy a few years ago by some very wealthy people and only has two or three groups of people come in each season.
Byron and his partner have owned the Hakai Lodge for 25 years; most of their customers arrive by float plane from Renton. Each September the whole thing is towed to Rivers Inlet for the winter; it would never survive on this part of the coast. We swapped sailing stories for about an hour and let him get back to work.
Since I had not had enough old-fallen-into-disrepair communities, we headed for Namu the next morning.
OH! But the people we met! We called on the VHF and got an answer, much to my surprise. Rene, who greeted us under their great keep-out-the-rain shelter, is welcoming, energetic, and friendly. There were three sailboats already tied up, and one had radioed that they were “wounded” (Rene’s word) and were sailing in. Two of the boats’ crews knew each other from previous anchorages and also knew the boat coming in under sail. As we stood around talking under the shelter in the pouring rain, Pete, Rene’s husband came in and lit a fire in the large round fire pit with a propane weed burner. Don’t try this at home. They certainly don’t weed here. 
The skippers and crews from Windwalker, Nycteris, Avoca, and Penguin spent a lovely afternoon and evening enjoying the fire and the company. As the afternoon progressed, we tried to resuscitate Pat’s sea urchin. She had wanted to somehow scrape the animal out and keep the shell, but when she dumped it out of it’s bucket onto the floor, it started to ambulate toward the water, and we decided it should be saved. We put it up on the rail, and watched it topple into the water only to see it FLOAT! No! No! Sink! Sink! Suggestions of fishing it back out and burping it were ruled out, and no one wanted to teach it to fart. It was last seen heading out to sea at quite a respectable speed in the company of a piece of driftwood. That little guy will have tales to tell when he gets home.
We shared stories and plans under the rain shelter by the fire in the Rain, Rain, Rain. No one does rain like The Raincoast. Through some wonderful alchemy of many brains, a few suggestions, and Pete’s tools, Nycteris’ propulsion problem was on its way to being solved when we left the next day.
Namu was a BC Packers’ plant years ago, with 2000 people living there in the summers. When the company abandoned the plant, they simply walked away, leaving the stock on the shelves in the store and all the equipment in place. When it finally stopped raining Tuesday morning, Doug and I went on an explore, being careful not to walk on the old piers. Looking in the windows of the store and seeing magazines and merchandise on the shelves was a strange experience. Decay and decline took on a whole new meaning in that place. We enjoyed imagining the lives of the people who called Namu home.
Two days north, up Cousins Inlet, we visited Ocean Falls: population 2-3,000 in the 1940’s and 40 in 2007. When Crown Zellerbach left in 1980, the government ran the plant for a few years, and then razed most of the town in 1986. They could have done more. The dam, which was built in 1917-18, now supplies power to Bella Bella and Shearwater.
Wildlife spotting in Ocean Falls: a little black bear sitting on top of a wall next to the building where we did our laundry and a porcupine that didn’t allow us on his street as we walked toward the dam just before dusk. AND Black Flies. They found us almost a week ago at Pruth Bay and we are still itchy and blotchy. I look like I got in a fight. Jolie and Joe gave us Bug-Off garments before we left, but we weren’t wearing them.
More photos and tales will follow, although I’m not sure when we’ll find a mailbox again….
If you would like a chronological rendering of this information, please print out these pages, and cut and paste. We don’t have ‘Puter (the Toshiba laptop computer we borrowed from Jolie and Joe) out every day. He spends his days under the covers in the aft cabin where there is less chance of Bounce and Heel, both of which bother him greatly. But now he is out because There Is Nothing to Do; we are tied to a dock in the pouring rain at the end of the known would.
We rounded Cape Caution at 8:15 this morning. How did we get there? The last time I “chronicled” we were heading into the Johnstone Straits. Johnstone Straits are known for their Maytag Effect: Lots of suds, and no dry cycle. Since the weather forecast was favorable, we decided to ignore the safer route through Green and Whirlpool Rapids that dumps you out into the straits further west. After carefully reading our books, we decided to spend the night at Port Harvey “the best anchorage on the Straits” (in a field of two). As we neared our destination, Doug pointed out that we were making 7.3 knots speed-over-ground (no snickering) and we could be in Port McNeill by 7:30 and it was light until 10:00…. I suddenly felt young again; just like when we were first married and drove back from Yellowstone almost non-stop, or drove to Salem for pizza with Kip and Kay and back the same evening. Don’t ask me why Doug assumed the current and wind would maintain their direction and velocity. They did not, but we were anchored (no room at the dock) by 8:00 that night.
Port McNeill is a lumber and fishing town suffering from the depression in those two industries. But they like Yachties, and have good services including a NEW LAUNDROMAT. The last time we were here, the laundromat was in a broken-down building with broken-down equipment, but we met two helicopter loggers there, and talking with them made it well worth the wait. This time, CNN was on the telly in the immaculate Laundromat, and we had fee Internet access. Which to I like better? Some people are never happy.
We crossed Queen Charlotte Straits the next morning and spent the night in Allison Harbor on the mainland, the last anchorage before rounding Cape Caution. As soon as we anchored, the wind came up and we watched carefully to see if Mr. Anchor was actually planning to stay where we thought he should. It is not often that you get to do this while it is still light; usually the wind comes up in the middle of the night.
Anchoring: We have an original-equipment anchor windlass and a new-last-year 45-pound anchor. Windwalker came with (and still has) a 33 pound Bruce anchor which is now our back-up anchor. Mr. 45 Pound Anchor (did I say that the is Very Handsome and knows it?) is connected to his mom by 300 feet of chain. We always think kind thoughts about the windlass when we ask him to do anything since he is not longer young and we know how that feels. Anchoring entails circling round while the depth sounder tells us what is beneath the keel, and then lowering Mr. Anchor and backing the boat. Doug and I wear our Toys ‘R Us walkie-talkies; we don’t have to yell, but still get to use bad words. So afar this has worked well. Stay tuned.
We were told to listen to on the Weather Channel 3 (no Steve Poole here) for the “sea stat” at West Sea Otter Buoy in order to know if we had a big enough “window” to round Cape Caution and cross Queen Charlotte Sound, one of the two big bodies of open water on the Inside Passage. If the sea sate was less than 1.5 meters and the predicted winds for Small Craft Warnings or lower, rounding the Cape should be fine. On Friday morning, West Sea Otter sea state was 1.0, and Windwalker motored around the cape with no wind and no problems, just moderate seas …COMING ALL THE WAY FROM JAPAN. Can you tell that I was impressed?
Part of the intrigue of this region for us is the history of both the First Peoples and the white settlers, and we’ve identified some places we don’t want to miss. After rounding Cape Caution, we took the second right and headed for Dawson’s Landing in Rivers Inlet, one of the places on the list. The fact that no one answered our VHF call, there were NO boats tied up, and it looked deserted, was a bit disconcerting, but they were open, and we tied up just at the next six-hour rainstorm hit. Their supply barge was more than a week overdue, fishing season was starting Next week, and they had no smoked salmon. The place looked very sad and needy, but, as Waggoner Cruising Guide says, it is a capturing of coastal history before your eyes.
We read books, took naps, and listened to their the German Shepard bark at fish and seals. Rob, the owner who grew up there, told me that when he was a kid, (the store has been in his family since 1954) the lights from the commercial fish boats in the bay made it look like Vancouver, without Stanley Park, obviously. He’s not sure what the future holds.
About 11:00 that night, the supply tug and barge arrived and proceeded to off-load cargo. The next day, Nola, Rob’s wife, related the saga of the barge company. The Crown has awarded the contract to serve the various fish camps and settlements to the lowest bidder. According to Nola, this owner doesn’t maintain his equipment, pays low wages, and works his crews hard. They lost a barge (but not the crew) a few weeks earlier when the green crew decided the seas were too rough, and turned the tug around. No one told the barge, which proceed to run over the tug. The barge in now on the rocks, along with someone’s order. That ain’t no way to run a railroad. Nola had more stories, but the gist of it is that all of the fish camps (with plans to open between July 2nd and 9th) need their supplies (all of which are delivered to Dawson’s Landing) and have no way to get them in a timely manner, if at all. I thought the situation sounded perilous, but Nola seemed calm. If you live in this environment, I think you guess wait for what happens next.Now it is Canada Day, Sunday, July 1st, and we’re anchored in Pruth Bay on Calvert Island, recommend by Ed and Judy, as well as other Inside Passage Experts. At the head of the bay is Hakai Beach Resort, a beautifully maintained fly-in fishing lodge with handsome red metal-roofed buildings and lots of rules. (The same barge and tug arrived this afternoon.#025). We carefully walked across the resort grounds to the trail leading to a “spectacular fine-fine sand ocean beach” and then went for an explore on the inland waters in Ratty.
We decided to investigate what we thought was an abandoned cannery, but as we got closer, it was apparent that it was not abandoned and was not a cannery. It was another fish camp, but very different from Hakai Beach Resort. Hakai Beach Resort will open tomorrow and there were men working on the buildings and grounds, who said “hello”, but were not welcoming. As we neared Hakai Lodge (no beach here, it is anchored to the wall) a workman invited us to tie up and have a cup of coffee. (042)There were five or six men working on the Boston Whalers on the docks. We tied up Ratty, and another worker said, “Coffee is in that building.” A man wearing a Hakai Lodge shirt approached us and, introducing himself as Byron, invited us (again) to have coffee, and led us into the one of the buildings where people were unpacking boxes. These people were outgoing, welcoming, and interested in having someone share their coffee, which was quite good. They all arrived about three days ago and will open in a week. Byron gave us a tour, told us the history of the Hakai Beach Resort that was bought out of bankruptcy a few years ago by some very wealthy people and only has two or three groups of people come in each season.Byron and his partner have owned the Hakai Lodge for 25 years; most of their customers arrive by float plane from Renton. Each September the whole thing is towed to Rivers Inlet for the winter; it would never survive on this part of the coast. We swapped sailing stories for about an hour and let him get back to work.
Since I had not had enough old-fallen-into-disrepair communities, we headed for Namu the next morning.
OH! But the people we met! We called on the VHF and got an answer, much to my surprise. Rene, who greeted us under their great keep-out-the-rain shelter, is welcoming, energetic, and friendly. There were three sailboats already tied up, and one had radioed that they were “wounded” (Rene’s word) and were sailing in. Two of the boats’ crews knew each other from previous anchorages and also knew the boat coming in under sail. As we stood around talking under the shelter in the pouring rain, Pete, Rene’s husband came in and lit a fire in the large round fire pit with a propane weed burner. Don’t try this at home. They certainly don’t weed here. The skippers and crews from Windwalker, Nycteris, Avoca, and Penguin spent a lovely afternoon and evening enjoying the fire and the company. As the afternoon progressed, we tried to resuscitate Pat’s sea urchin. She had wanted to somehow scrape the animal out and keep the shell, but when she dumped it out of it’s bucket onto the floor, it started to ambulate toward the water, and we decided it should be saved. We put it up on the rail, and watched it topple into the water only to see it FLOAT! No! No! Sink! Sink! Suggestions of fishing it back out and burping it were ruled out, and no one wanted to teach it to fart. It was last seen heading out to sea at quite a respectable speed in the company of a piece of driftwood. That little guy will have tales to tell when he gets home.We shared stories and plans under the rain shelter by the fire in the Rain, Rain, Rain. No one does rain like The Raincoast. Through some wonderful alchemy of many brains, a few suggestions, and Pete’s tools, Nycteris’ propulsion problem was on its way to being solved when we left the next day.
Namu was a BC Packers’ plant years ago, with 2000 people living there in the summers. When the company abandoned the plant, they simply walked away, leaving the stock on the shelves in the store and all the equipment in place. When it finally stopped raining Tuesday morning, Doug and I went on an explore, being careful not to walk on the old piers. Looking in the windows of the store and seeing magazines and merchandise on the shelves was a strange experience. Decay and decline took on a whole new meaning in that place. We enjoyed imagining the lives of the people who called Namu home.
Two days north, up Cousins Inlet, we visited Ocean Falls: population 2-3,000 in the 1940’s and 40 in 2007. When Crown Zellerbach left in 1980, the government ran the plant for a few years, and then razed most of the town in 1986. They could have done more. The dam, which was built in 1917-18, now supplies power to Bella Bella and Shearwater.
Wildlife spotting in Ocean Falls: a little black bear sitting on top of a wall next to the building where we did our laundry and a porcupine that didn’t allow us on his street as we walked toward the dam just before dusk. AND Black Flies. They found us almost a week ago at Pruth Bay and we are still itchy and blotchy. I look like I got in a fight. Jolie and Joe gave us Bug-Off garments before we left, but we weren’t wearing them.
More photos and tales will follow, although I’m not sure when we’ll find a mailbox again….
