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| 2009 CRUISE REPORT, WEEK SIX
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July 8, 2009.
This is a tricky report to write. In a way we have done nothing but wait. In another way we’ve had the dickens scared out of us, met and seen some remarkable people, and had some good experiences.
Let’s begin with the waiting. As noted in the Week Five report, the weather turned against us and we couldn’t go north of Cape Caution without fighting our way through high winds and big seas. We’re frustrated because we have an annual guidebook to update. We strongly resist the seduction of saying, “Oh, well, this year we didn’t make it.”
We waited in the Broughtons, which if they are not Paradise, are pretty close to it. We ran down to Kwatsi Bay for a lovely night, we celebrated Canada Day and had a pancake breakfast at Shawl Bay, we had a magnificent pizza at Greenway Sound. We spent an interesting afternoon at Pierre’s at Echo Bay. But most of all we waited. Our itinerary was slipping away and we were powerless to change the winds.
At last the door opened. We left our moorage at Greenway Sound and ran north through Sutlej Channel, out Wells Passage, and into Queen Charlotte Strait. Blunden Harbour or perhaps Allison Harbour or Skull Cove farther along were possible overnights.
Calm seas. Things looked promising. At the Jeanette Islands the first humpback whales appeared. One of them breached completely out of the water and landed with a huge splash. Also, at the Jeanette Islands, our first ocean swells. They weren’t big, but Marilynn was getting queasy. We know what to do when Marilynn gets queasy: find flat water, quit if necessary. Since Allison Harbour was one of our potential layover sites, we ran up the bay, past the rocks (easy to avoid), and anchored for the night.
Allison Harbour is a lovely spot, with lots of room, no swells from the westerly, and a fabulous brown mud bottom for the anchor. We slept well.
The next morning the fun began, if fun is a word to describe Real Problems.
The Real Problem was Slingsby Channel. Slingsby Channel is the narrow, primary passage for the flow from hundreds of miles of the inland waterways of Seymour and Belize inlets behind Nakwakto Rapids, and their connecting sounds, bays, inlets and lagoons. The channel empties into Queen Charlotte Strait south of Cape Caution.
Although we departed shortly before the turn from ebb to flood, we assumed that the flow out of Slingsby Channel would be small enough that it wouldn’t create difficulties.
We were wrong. We were at the end of a large ebb. Slingsby Channel had fire hosed into Queen Charlotte Strait. The effect would last well beyond the turn to flood.
Opposed by the Slingsby current, lazy ocean swells changed into high, steep seas, with little distance between them. Fog made the situation worse. We had no visual references, only the next big wave or waves beyond.
Marilynn has found that if she helms in rough conditions, she doesn’t get seasick. Her attention on the horizon and the challenge of steering the boat keeps her functioning. Her attention was needed, as sets of high and steep seas came at us. The bow went up, paused briefly pointed skyward, then plunged down. For an instant we would be weightless. The crash of the boat and its contents into the trough below was frightening. The boat shuddered. Dishes in the cupboard sounded as they were beaten into shards. Books fell out. The bow rose to do it again. Up, pause at the top, crash down. Turning back wasn’t an option, not in those conditions. We had to ride it through.
Approximately at Cape Caution everything changed. We could see a line on the water. When we crossed that line, the seas flattened. The change in conditions was dramatic—and welcome. The time was 1010. The fog was gone and the sun was out. That didn’t mean the crossing would not be without further peril. The westerly might be coming. We pushed the handles forward from 8.5 knots to 14.5 knots and hurried to Rivers Inlet before the westerly developed. At noon we tied up at Duncanby Landing.
A Tolly 61 was at Duncanby, and the forward tube of its dinghy sitting on the upper deck was deflated. Up in the restaurant we met the owners, having lunch with the couple from the boat they were traveling with. The two boats had arrived shortly before we came in. The dinghy was damaged in the seas we had encountered. It had come free from its cradle and swung pendulum-like from the crane, carrying away the upper deck stern rail and stanchions, and holing the forward tube. The husband had gone up in those seas to regain control.
Theirs was not the only experience in the Slingsby seas. Yesterday afternoon we followed Linda Lewis and Dave Parker (Royal Sounder) into Ocean Falls. It took them longer to land because they had to tie their 18-foot Phil Bolger-designed shore boat alongside before docking. They were lucky to still have the shore boat. A thick stainless steel fitting had stretched and parted in Slingsby seas. When they looked back the boat was gone. They turned around, and in fog somehow found the drifting boat.
Despite the seas, Dave got in the shore boat. Linda could see flatter water inshore, and urged Dave to go there—which Dave did, although he told us he got “pretty beat up” in the process. Dave rerigged a towing bridle, they hooked up, and continued around Cape Caution. I don’t know how they did it. One thing that helped was that Dave had a handheld VHF radio with him. A couple on another boat listened to the radio communications. They marveled at how calm and orderly Dave and Linda sounded, especially Linda. Linda teaches boating and boat handling. She and Dave alternate skipper roles when they cruise. Linda is a regular speaker at the Seattle Boat Show. I suppose we could say the experience could not have happened to a more prepared skipper and crew. In the same circumstances, I think Marilynn and I would have said good-bye to the shore boat.
We had an excellent lunch at Duncanby and would have stayed but for the fact that we needed to regain lost time. At 1400 we set out for Dawson’s Landing, on the other side of Rivers Inlet. The westerly was in, and if we hadn’t speeded up at Cape Caution we would have been caught in it.
Dawson’s Landing. Welcome to the way lives are lived north of Cape Caution. Rob and Nola Bachen are the owners. The store, the house and the cabins all are on floats. Each year when we visit, Rob has improved the place. This year, some new docks, and new decking in front of the store. Rob showed us his big project last winter and spring. A winter storm had sprung the outer support log under the store, and it had to be put back. Also, the entire store needed to be raised on its float. Rob acquired and installed six new logs, each of them about three feet in diameter. He used hydraulic jacks. First one side of the store was raised a few inches and the log worked in. Then the other side was raised and the log fed through. At least that’s what I heard him say. I’m still not sure how all those big logs got installed and cabled into place.
The sprung log remained a challenge. Rob said he thought about it and thought about it, until one day a barge appeared. The barge had a large excavator on it. Could he borrow the barge and excavator? Sure, as long as the excavator came back with a full fuel tank. The barge was maneuvered into place. The excavator lifted the corner of the float. The log was put back where it belonged.
Rob is a brilliant, even if unschooled, practical civil engineer. If you want a big job figured out, you could do a lot worse than putting Rob Bachen on it.
Whales. Last year was the year of bear sightings. We saw bears everywhere, including the white Kermode “spirit” bear we found at Butedale. We’ve seen only one bear so far this year, and it disappeared into the forest. What we have seen is whales. The fishermen said there must have been a hundred humpback whales in Fitz Hugh Sound. They were rolling, blowing, and jumping. Whales were far away and close aboard. Sometimes they would arc into a leisurely dive and hold their flukes above the surface for an instant before sounding. At first, we stopped the boat to see a whale. By the end of the day we simply motored along. Whales were in front of us, beside us and behind us.
Namu. Although the once great and now falling apart cannery of Namu is not for everyone, we covet our yearly visit there. Pete and Rene (pronounced “Renie”) Darwin, the caretakers, are true north coast people. They chain smoke hand-rolled cigarettes, they grow much of their own food, they live hard, work hard and laugh hard.
A gillnet salmon opening was the next day. When we showed up, 10 clean and well-equipped gillnet boats and one fish buyer were tied up. I feared that there would be no room for us, but Rene radioed she had lots of room “inside.” Sure enough, when we rounded the outermost group of rafted fish boats, we saw we had ample dock space for our 37-footer.
Carefully, I nosed into position, and put the port engine in reverse to swing the stern to the dock. Oh, no. I hadn’t put the bow close enough, and I needed more forward way on to make the landing work. The bow swung away from the dock, and somehow the stern didn’t get close enough. A group of the fishermen, professional boatmen all, sat on the dock, watching. Rene had the midship line and was trying to bring us in, but to little effect. One of the fishermen came to the edge, and Marilynn threw the stern line to him. Rene and the fisherman horsed the boat to the dock.
A little later, I went up to the fishermen and said with a smile on my face, “Nobody saw my boat handling, right?”
“What boat handling?” one of them replied.
The fishermen were great guys. They were serious, middle-aged small businessmen, waiting for a chance to go to work. They loved their boats and their gear, and they loved to fish. They had respect for the fish. One of them, his name is Ed, had fished for something like 45 years (he was beyond middle age, but was lean and strong, and moved with grace), told us he marveled at the way thousands of fish can swim together and never touch; that salmon can leave the stream of their birth and four years later find and return to the very same stream to spawn and die.
All the boats except the packer left that evening to stake out their gillnet spots. The opening began at 6:00 a.m. and ended at 10:00 p.m. Maybe, if they were lucky, the opening would be extended for a day. They wouldn’t know until the afternoon. If it turned out to be a two-day opening, they’d finish the second day pretty tired.
A black-hulled gillnetter nuzzled in behind us, mocking my own terrible landing. It was Jake and his wife Hillary, known to all. Jake had been fishing for more than 40 years. Hillary was the only woman on all the boats. Immediately, Jake began stripping net off the reel at the back of his boat. Later, I saw him cutting net away from the line that held it, and I asked what he was doing.
“Propeller shark,” he answered. He’d backed into the net. Six fathoms of the net were ruined. He spent a couple hours tying new net into the damaged section.
The next morning, the boat whose skipper had taken our stern line returned to the dock. Working fast, the skipper stripped net off the reel and onto the dock, and began the same cutting away and repairing I had seen with Jake the evening before. Carefully, because you can never guess a man’s humor at such a time, I asked what had happened. “Caught the bottom,” he said. “Fishing was slow anyway.”
When we landed at Namu we could hear a motor roaring up on the pier. Rene told us Pete was in the sawmill. We climbed up and walked into a roaring doorway. A gasoline powered saw blade was cutting boards from a long cedar log. Sawdust flew. Pete Darwin stood at one end, watching the board being cut.
At the end of the cut the saw blade returned to Pete. He twirled some adjustment wheels, confirmed the dimensions, and set the thing marching down the log again. Later, Pete explained that his one-man sawmill had three blades. One was the big vertical blade we could see cutting into the log. The other two were horizontal, one to cut the top edge, the other to cut the bottom edge. The wood was beautiful. We saw 14-foot-long cedar planks with rich coloring in the grain, and not a single knot.
Did we want a beer? The oil pressure in the Volkswagen beetle engine had dropped to 15 psi, and it needed a rest. About one-half a beer was the usual time. Taking a break, Pete walked us up to the house people had lived in just a few years earlier. Now the house was slipping on its foundations and the roof was leaking. No one could live in it again. Outside, he and Rene had planted a large vegetable garden, including several rows of wheat. Pete had broken a rototiller, trying to prepare the garden. Then he remembered the big excavator. It chewed up the sod so the rototiller could finish the job. The garden was surrounded by an electric fence to keep the bears out—30,000 volts. “Don’t put your tongue on this fence,” he warned. Turning to me, he added, “And don’t pee against it.” I thought about the implications.
We toured Rene’s greenhouse, with its cherry tree, peach tree, and plantings of vegetables. Did we want a beer? We climbed the outside stairs to the rooms Pete was finishing above. Although it was filled with various furniture and boxes, one room’s paneling was completed. The walls and pitched ceiling were paneled in exquisite cedar Pete had milled, planed and installed. “Step in and feel this room,” Pete instructed. I stepped in and was surrounded by absolute quiet and the rich sweet smell of cedar. I’ve never felt a room like it.
Namu is rough and yet special. It isn’t everyone’s cup of tea (want a beer?), but if you’re willing to take Namu on its terms, it’s a treat. One warning: The place is falling down. Namu will be there for a while longer, but less and less each year. Don’t wait.v
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