We are once again tied to Carol the Bead Lady and Jerry's float house in Shawl Bay at 50 deg 52 min N, 126 deg 40 min W.  We have travelled approx 220 nautical miles (6000 feet each) as the crow flies, and 424 nm over the bottom since Weewahnie Hot Springs.  We completed our circumnavigation of Princess Royal Island and have rounded Cape Caution to reach the protected waters east of Vancouver Island.  We've gone for a week without sharing an anchorage, and for five days without even seeing another boat (Laredo Inlet).  All is well on board.

 

For several days, the air was hazy with smoke from the forest fires in the interior.  And we had a week of quite hot weather when it was too hot to do anything in the afternoon and the sun was too strong to be out.

 

The summer weather pattern is changing.  We have had several lows and fronts come through with rain and southerly winds.  The Cape Caution rounding is one of the areas along the Inside Passage that is open to the Pacific Ocean, between Vancouver Island and Calvert Island.  The forecasted following winds never materialized, but the rounding wasn't bad as we had less than 10 knots of wind on the nose, and the swells were not overly steep.  We are hoping to find the Indian Summer we have enjoyed on several other trips.

 

We had to use our new fog horn for the first time in the thick spots at Seaforth Channel and Queen Charlotte Sound.  The required fog signal is a blast every two minutes.  In the past, we have set a timer and used a manual air horn.  Last summer when the masts were down, we installed an electric horn on one of the main spreaders.  We have an electronic controller that automatically gives the blast every two minutes.  It works well, but we are glad we didn't have to listen to it all day.

 

We're still getting lots of crab and prawns.  Margie has caught two Coho salmon and several bottom fish. 

 

Wildlife highlights have been on the water, not on land.  We had hoped to see a Spirit Bear on Princess Royal Island, but did not.  These are black bears with white fur that occur only in that area.  The salmon were not yet returning to the creeks, so the bears were not hanging out in the open to catch them.

 

We did see several small marine mammals that were most likely either mink, martin, or fisher.   

 

We've had dall's porpoises and pacific white sided dolphins swim along with the boat.  They like to surface on one side, then go under the boat and surface on the other side.  They also like to swim right under the bow, sometimes just staying in the bow wave, and other times sweeping from side to side, seeing how close they can come to the bow (front of the boat).

 

The most spectacular dolphin sighting was a pod of at least 100 swimming in a line near Cape Caution.  They were on a mission and did not come over to visit.  From a distance they looked like a large tide rip.

We saw many humpback whales, generally feeding near shore, at various places along the way.

 

In Laredo Inlet, we saw lots of salmon jumping out of the water.  August was dry, so the streams were low and the temperatures too high for the salmon to start going upstream.  So the fish hang out where their streams enter the ocean and wait for rain.

 

In both Fish Egg Inlet and in the small bay west of Home Bay (Rivers Inlet), we saw huge schools of fish approx 12" long.  They were probably pilchards.  There were literally thousands of them.  It was like being in a river of fish.  When they were spooked by something like a seal, the wave from their motion was enough to rock Dream Catcher at anchor (30,000 lbs of boat).

For bird life, as usual we saw too many bald eagles to count, osprey, great blue herons, common and red necked loons, numerous ducks, tufted puffins, and various types of gulls.

Human based activity included:

 

Passing the final resting place of the BC Ferry Queen of the North off Gil Island.  This was a sobering experience.  The ferry went down several years ago very early one morning in the middle of the winter.  Luckily for all but two of the people on board, they were only 4 miles from the town of Hartley Bay. 

 

Seeing several old fish traps at creek mouths.  These are places where First Nations people rolled rocks to form walls.  At high tide the salmon would come in and when the tide went out they were trapped and became easy pickings.

 

Meeting a couple from Prince Rupert who do creek and fish surveys under contract for the province.

 

Meeting a provincial geology mapping crew.

 

Buying fresh produce at Shearwater.  If you want the freshest food, go early in the week.  The ferry comes in Sunday evenings and the store is closed Monday AM for restocking.

 

Seeing Steve from SV Kharma in Shearwater and Potts Lagoon.

 

Discovering that Duncanby Landing in Rivers Inlet has changed into a high end fishing resort and the store is gone.

 

And here are some daily details:

 

August 2:  To Eagle Bay.  Walked on the beach, saw a waterfall, swimming hole, and First Nations trappers' cabin.

Aug 3:  To Kitimat.  The marina is a few miles from town.  We got a ride in to the supermarket with a couple from the First Nations village and took the bus back.  There is wifi at the marina store, but not down on the docks.  The bus runs Monday through Thursday.

 

Aug 4:  To Kitsaway anchorage again.

 

Aug 5-7:  Barnard Harbour, Cameron Cove.  There is a fancy fishing lodge here, two three storey buildings on barges and several other floats.  They have two helicopters to take people sightseeing or fly fishing.  Some of their guests were trolling for salmon along the entrance to the harbour (yes, it is spelled this way North of the border).  We had our salmon lure hanging off the back of the boat as usual, and slowed down a bit for better trolling speed at the entrance.  Right after we passed the other boats, zing, FISH ON!  Unfortunately, this fish was quite fond of my favorite lure and broke the line in order to keep it.  Caught crab in Cameron Cove.  Tried to catch salmon from the dinghy.

   

Aug 8:  Beautiful trip out to Laredo Channel on the west side of Princess Royal Island.  Slowed down as we were approaching our anchorage for the night at Smithers Island and FISH ON!  Chuck thought we snagged some kelp, but Margie reeled in our first Coho salmon of the trip.  Our favorite way to prepare fresh salmon is to take a cedar board (not chemically treated), soak it in saltwater for a few hours, put the salmon on the board in the BBQ.  Yummmmy.  We enjoyed this while stern tied in the cove facing Laredo Channel.

 

Aug 9:  To Laredo Inlet, Alston Cove.  We checked out a small anchorage in Monk Bay on the way in, but decided even though the beach was inviting that we would continue on.

 

Aug 10:  Bay of Plenty (of wind).  We took the skiff up the creek at high tide.

 

Aug 11-13:  Fifer Cove.  We explored this cove and Mellis Inlet buy skiff, walked along the creek at Fifer Cove and on a small island.  There were a few fish jumping at the creek mouth.  They may have made it up to the lake at high tide.  There was an old fish trap at the creek mouth.  Mellis Inlet is ringed by mountains 3500 feet tall with beautiful scenery, but is quite deep for anchoring.

Aug 14:  Caught coho #2 on the way to Brew Island at the head of Laredo Inlet.  Had salmon for lunch and explored the creeks by dinghy.  Saw an old village site and a waterfall.  Then went back to Alston Cove for the night. 

Aug 15:  This was a day with many milestones.

We finished our circumnavigation of Princess Royal Island.

We saw our first boat in 5 days a bit north of Boat Bluff.

We shared an anchorage for the first time since Cameron Cove on Aug 7 - Clothes Bay just south of Klemtu.

 

Aug 16:  To Oliver Cove.  We were going to have lunch on the hook at Cockle Bay and wait for slack at Percival Narrows.  But the bottom shoals quickly to the beach and the south wind was coming in.  An ebb current would have created nasty waves in the narrows.  Since it was flooding, we decided to fight 2-3 knots of current in calm water and went through.  The sea otters had either moved out or were in hiding.

 

Aug 17:  To Shearwater.  It was a bit foggy in the morning, so we used our automatic fog horn for the first time.  We slowed down at Idol Point and joined the parade of boats trying to catch a salmon.  We saw one landed, but didn't get a nibble.  As we were settling down for the evening, we heard a boat anchoring nearby, looked out, and it was Steve on SV Kharma.

 

Aug 18-20:  Codville Lagoon.  This time we anchored at the north end for a change.  We explored the creek and small lagoon coming in.  Found a fish trap and what may have been a small swimming hole.  Put out one crab pot and two prawn traps.  In three harvests, got 4 crab and 143 prawns.  Not bad.

 

Aug 21-24:  Joe's Bay in Fish Egg Inlet.  There was a slightly nasty warm front coming through, so we went to Joe's Bay, a well protected anchorage.  We didn't see more than 3 knots of wind, and it was blowing 25 at the Addenbrooke Island lighthouse, less than 5 miles away.  We hunkered down in the rain and explored the cove by rowboat in between the raindrops.  There is a reversing rapids between the bay and Elizabeth Lagoon.  Since you can only get through at high slack, we decided to just look, not pass through.  Saw something like a mink swimming near the rapids.  Rowed over for a look at several different tide heights for very different views.  This is the first place we saw what we called fish swarms or bait balls.

 

Aug 25-26:  Fury Cove.  We walked on the beach.  The whales weren't close by this visit.  We had a salmon lure out the back of the boat and stopped for a few minutes in the outer cove on our way in.  The fishing line dropped towards the bottom, and when we reeled it in, we had a good sized spiny rockfish - fish tacos for dinner.

 

Aug 27-28:  We hadn't been very far up Rivers Inlet before, so we went part way to Draney Narrows.  We had lunch at Fishhook Bay and went up to Allard Cove for a couple of nights.  The recent rains fed several waterfalls in the 3500 foot mountains.  On the way back out, we saw around 50 dolphins feeding where Robert Arm comes into Draney Inlet.  A few came over to swim with us.

 

Aug 29:  Stopped at Duncanby Landing, and continued to the small cove west of Home Bay.  We anchored between the two islands with a stern tie to the outer one.  This is the second place we saw pilchard swarms.  Chuck spotted a humpback whale in the cove.  This anchorage has some swell, and it was good preparation for the next day's rounding of Cape Caution to sleep in the swell.

 

Aug 30:  Rounded Cape Caution to Napier Bay.  It started raining when we got to Wells Passage, about an hour before we anchored.

 

Aug 31:  Dodged raindrops to Shawl Bay and received a warm welcome at Carol & Jerry's float house.

 

Sept 1-Sept 10:  Chuck helped Jerry with a water system improvement project.  Visited with Gary & Nancy at the float house next door and at the marina.  Margie caught crab and prawns.  And we are still here for at least a couple more days.

  

Hope you are had a good summer and happy Labor Day.

 

Margie & Chuck