gameshow time!

It's time for "Name That Animal"!!!

(This post is dedicated to all the bio-nerds in my life. Mostly Kenz)

#1


Pulled up from a crab trap:

#2


#3


These next three were pulled up from a prawn trap:

#4


#5


#6



Double extra bonus points if you name the animal this came from AND the animal it used to be! (sorry for the poop pictures Mom)

#7

you never know...

...just what your anchor chain is going to pull up.

We anchored in Waddington Bay up in the Broughton Islands at the northern end of Vancouver Island. We were waiting out a forecasted 40 knot gale so we put all sorts of chain to help our anchor hold. The gale never did show up where we were at so we went to weigh anchor the next morning. As I'm running the windlass to pick up the chain, something ain't right. I brought in about 50 feet of chain before I discovered the problem.



Hmmmmm...

No problem, I say. We'll just loop a line around the branch, make it fast on the deck cleats, slack the chain, free it and let go one end of the line. This branch will surely bother us no more.

HA HA HA, the branch seemed to say. You should definitely try that.



Predictably, my plan failed. We hauled more chain in on the windlass to shed some light on the situation.







At this point we discovered two more problems. The first problem is that this is not a "branch". It would be more accurate to call it a "tree". The second problem is that our anchor chain has braided itself around, under, through, between and amongst every one of the several branches of this tree. Adding to the fun, one of the branches has jammed itself between our bobstay and hull. So plan B became, get a bunch of lines on the tree, lean precariously over the rail trying to de-tangle the chain with boat poles while fending off the tree that kept wanting to clobber the boat and us and hopefully not fall in the water. Then let all the lines go in some sort of order where the tree doesn't end up tangled in the chain again and doesn't drag one of us down with it.









After a couple hours of screwing around, we finally got the anchor chain free and let the tree drop down to the bottom where it will lie in wait for the next fool to anchor on top of it in Waddington Bay.

(Epilogue: The windlass that came with the boat when we bought it was pretty undersized for the ground tackle we put on the boat. It finally shit the bed last year so we installed a new windlass. I bought one that was altogether overkill (a Maxwell VW1500) for what we needed but it was only incrementally more expensive. As the windlass pulled in the chain with this tree attached, the bow of the boat dropped down in the water. Never once did the windlass slow down or even sound strained. I am now officially a giant fan of this Maxwell windlass and couldn't recommend it more highly. It has also proved it's worth hauling in 400' of prawn trap line with another tree wrapped in it and our anchor chain which caught on lines from an old fish pen in Turnbull Cove. The moral of the story - if you're gonna buy a windlass for the northwest, buy a gigantic one.)

50° 43.0'N 126° 36.951'W

the broughton archipelago

After six days of waiting out a 30 to 40 knot blow on Johnstone Straight, we finally escaped that unfriendly stretch of water and headed into the Broughtons. The last time we were up here, the Broughton Islands were one of our favorite places. We got near the end of Johnstone Straight and took a right turn up Havannah Channel, headed to Lagoon Cove.

May 19th - Lagoon Cove

We'd long heard of Bill and Jean's hospitality and couldn't wait to experience it ourselves. It was the first civilization we'd seen in two weeks, though calling it "civilization" might be stretching the truth a bit. Lagoon Cove marina is situated on East Cracroft Island in what could best be described as the back and beyond of nowhere. Electricity is produced by generator, but only after 4pm. All supplies arrive by boat. They do offer an internet connection but it's a satellite connection that's pretty miserly with the bandwidth. Keep your eyes peeled when you're walking around because there's more bears than birds.

Lagoon Cove is well known amongst PNW boaters for their happy hour. Every morning, rain or shine, Bill heads out in his skiff to haul up his prawn traps. Every afternoon at 5:00 on the dot, happy hour commences. It's a bring-your-own-appetizers-and-bottle affair, but Bill and Jean provide a metric shit-ton of fresh prawns and giant bowl of cocktail sauce. So we spent a few hours shoveling prawns into our faces and chatting with Bill, Jean and the crew of M/V Important Business - the only other boat on the dock. We reveled in conversations with someone other than each other. Christy and I love each other dearly but after two weeks of only talking to each other, Christy was ready to tackle the next person she saw and hold them down until they talked to her.




The afternoon turned sunny and calm so we rigged up the hammock. Christy, right before one of her few naps that afternoon.


This guy was sniffing around our happy hour. He was big and shiny - clearly well fed.


While we were there, we bottled another batch of home beer that we brewed in Octopus Islands. A giant thanks to s/v Bint al Khamseen for teaching us their beer recipe.

May 20th - Waddington Bay

The next day, we took off intending to head for Turnbull Cove. We turned to the weather channel on VHF and learned of a 40 knot blow set to blow through Queen Charlotte Strait. Turnbull Cove has a reputation for being dodgy in a southeasterly so we changed course and headed to Waddington Bay. We were here a few years back and really liked it. After spending a quiet night, we decided the gale was a non-event and took off for Turnbull. We had a bit of time getting the anchor up on deck but that'll have to wait for another blog post.

Waddington Bay is protected by a smattering of small islands called the Fox Group. After winding our way back out the entrance, we headed up to the intersection of Eden, Insect, Baker and Tracy Islands. The four islands construct a tight four-way intersecting channel that we had to check out. The channels are narrow but the depths are all pretty good. It felt like driving up a river.


This was our route out of Waddington Bay. One of the reasons we love this area so much.


Heading towards Fife Sound.

May 21st - Turnbull Cove

We pulled into Turnbull Cove and found M/V Important Business the only other boat anchored in the large cove. We spent three days here and had dinner a few times with Ed, Myrna, Lloyd and Delores - the crew of this 55 foot gin palace. We really enjoyed their company. Especially since they're all from Butte, MT. It was kinda fun to recount the times I got beat up in Butte while I grew up in Helena 60 miles away.

Turnbull Cove is ever farther back and farther beyond nowhere. The area is surrounded by small inlets, lagoons and one hellacious rapid named Roaring Hole Rapids. We chose not to tempt our fate. Rightly so, as Ed told us about the time he tried it in a dinghy and flipped half way through. We were really happy to have our planing dinghy with our awesome 15hp outboard in order to explore the area. We spent alot of time at 20 knots blasting around into different inlets and passes. We spent the days crabbing, prawning, playing cards and just burrowing farther into cruising mode. Perhaps a few naps were had.


The mist from Roaring Hole Rapids. This was nowhere close to max tide and it was still a Class II rapid.




Hauling up 400' of prawn trap line that was wrapped around part of a tree.


Our haul included a few prawns and a starfish with two hundred legs (I counted).




On our way out of Turnbull Cove, a thick fog settled in. When we weighed anchor, we couldn't see any shoreline. With a bow watch, a pitiful fog horn and good radar we picked our way through.

50° 57.555'N 126° 50.229'W

cruising mode

May 9th - Smuggler Cove

I gave myself an accidental eyebrow wax, eyelash trim and haircut yesterday.

It turns out the propane oven flame had gone off and I thought I'd relight it. Poof. That was one big ball of flame. Fortunately I did not burn the boat down (see Jason's rule #1) or cause any other damage to the boat or us.

But hey, free haircut! We're always looking for ways to cut costs when we're out. Seeing as we have no money coming in, we consider ourselves in "cruising mode". Cruising mode means doing anything we can do ourselves to be as self-sufficient as possible and avoid spending money; very few dinners out (and then only at cheap places), finding free entertainment, limited spending on booze and other expensive items, and certainly no haircuts.

It may not sound like very much fun, but we manage to get by just fine. Lately I've been fixing up fairly gourmet dinners. Roasted red pepper and goat cheese pizza on homemade dough (ala Dad). And last night was crab stuffed portobello mushrooms.

With crab we caught off the boat

Entertainment can be free if you know where to look for it. Here was a guy on a paddleboard in Vancouver getting pulled over by the police:

And since booze is so damn expensive in Canada, we get around that rule by making our own beer on board (more on this later)

Not too shabby really :)

This second time around, we have agreed that we'd be willing to spend money to experience more of the culture of wherever we are. We feel like we missed out on some of that in Mexico because we were so extremely on the cheap. Maybe Jason will also let me pay for a haircut once in a while...

49° 30.953'N 123° 57.955'W

on our way north

May 7th - Smugglers Cove

From Vancouver, we skipped on up to Smugglers Cove for a few days while we waited out weather to go further.

This was one of our favorite spots last time around; partially because we thought we were badass after getting through the entrance (after being scared to death of the 60 ft wide break in the rocks), but partially because it's just a gorgeous spot.

Called Smugglers because it is so hard to find and people used to use it as a hiding spot to smuggle booze and Chinese laborers back in the day.

They've got a great trail there, which we checked out

But mostly we ate lots of crab - yum!

May 11th - Prideaux Haven

From Smugglers, we made it to Desolation Sound - an area smack in the middle of the backside of Vancouver Island. Turns out it's not so desolated in the middle of summer because the ocean water gets honking warm since the tide cycles don't fully exchange the water. Fortunately, we missed the crowds (and the warm water) and had only a few other boats in this gorgeous spot for the night we stayed.

We caught our first prawn - woohoo! A little more work than crab because they live at about 300-400 ft under, so we're still working on our prawn trap recovery system, but we're pretty sure it will include that new spin pole of ours (we have actually used it for sailing...once).

Turns out prawns like cat food. And crab like old smelly pot roast. Those have been the successful bait so far. It makes me wonder if we're eating the guys that would have won the Darwin awards if they were human.

They're spiky little suckers that like to flip off the deck if you don't watch them.

May 12th - Octopus Islands

Off to another spot that we visited last time, but just so gorgeous that we couldn't pass it up. This time we entered the Octopus Islands from the north instead of the east - much less pucker factor since it's not so rocky (last time there was a big ol' rock a few inches from the bottom of our keel).

There's a great hike here up to an alpine lake

It's a great spot for a few days, but we ended up there for six, waiting for a weather window to get through a particularly nasty area (Johnstone Strait). And since I saw this print on the 2nd hike, we decided to spend more time doing boat projects for most of that time:

50 16.755'N 125 13.767W