It rained consistently throughout the night and into the morning. We woke up to a light drizzle and the fog obscuring the mountain on the opposite side of the bay. We decided we should take on a few more supplies before heading deeper into the Inside Passage, so Aunt Christine, Trenton and I put on our rain suits and headed out in the dinghy for a 6-mile journey to the store at Blind Channel. It was drizzly and cold but I was hiding behind Trenton, who took the bulk of the wind-driven rain and bow splashes for me. We passed several whalewatching boats loaded with people and were hoping to get a glimpse of some passing whales in Mayne Passage, however the whalewatching boats had come from Campbell River and might have been using the passage as a shortcut to Cordero Channel, a known J-pod area. After an hour of poking around the dock, picking up ice and groceries and some fuel for the dinghy we headed back to the boat for showers and lunch, which consisted of Rueben sandwiches--grilled pastrami with sauerkraut and cheese on rye bread.
We spent most of the late afternoon and evening on the boat due to the weather, which gave me a chance to do some reading about some of the buildings and architecture I saw in Rome that I couldn’t identify at the time and read a little on the history of Shoal Bay where we were staying. When we did a short hike on the island the previous day I had a sense of déjà vu but couldn’t figure out why. As it turns out I have been here before but the huge white government building at the end of the dock that was here last time has since been destroyed.
We cracked the remainder of the crab we had on board, we watched Indiana Jones’ Raiders of the Lost Ark and Temple of Doom (I hadn’t seen these since I was a little kid) and otherwise spent the late afternoon and evening relaxing. For dinner Aunt Christine made the most amazing crab cakes I’ve ever had. They don’t stick together like the ones you buy because these are filled with crab, rather than just the batter in most crab cakes. In them were crab, garlic, green onion, celery, mustard, mayo, horseradish, Worchester sauce, Tabasco and panko breading and egg, all topped in lemon and served on a bed of rice with polenta. We watched three eagles circle the boat as we did one last check of the anchor before going to sleep.
Shoal Bay in the morning fog:
Sunday Aug 8:
We packed up in the morning and headed out toward the Octopus Island Group. The Kerners paddled this island group a couple of years ago while we were a few miles away in Prideaux Haven. I remember them talking about how beautiful it is there, so I was excited to head that direction. We headed east down the Cordero Channel then south-southwest down the Nodales Channel. We turned down the Okisillo Channel between the northern end of Quadra Island and down into the Octopus Island Group. We saw a few pods of porpoises along the way. It is really beautiful here—there are dozens of small broken islands all in close proximity to one another—most certainly a kayaker’s dream. We dropped anchor in the bay and headed out for a dinghy ride in the late afternoon. We stopped in to check out a cabin that has been open to the public for many years—people carve signs out of driftwood, some of them quite elaborate, with their family name, boat name and what year they were there. We found Trenton’s that was placed there exactly 11 years ago…he was only 3 months old at the time they placed his placard and after all of the years of hearing about it, he finally got to see it in person.
We spent an hour or so cruising around the islands in the dinghy. It was now late afternoon so we headed back to the boat for appetizers/dinner. Aunt Christine prepared lamb in a chimi churry sauce, avocadoes filled with fresh crab with sides of polenta, bruchetta (tomatoes with mozzarella cheese and basil on top) and apples with white cheddar cheese on top. After the feast Aunt Christine and I headed out in the early evening for a hike on Quadra Island that extends from Waiatt Bay to Small Inlet off Kanish Bay. The island looked like a rainforest, dense in vegetations and you can barely see up through the forest canopy. We got back to the dinghy just after dark and headed back to the boat in the pitch-dark. We watched the third Indiana Jones movie—the Last Crusade and went to bed.
A photo of an aerial of the Octopus Islands:
Monday Aug 9:
We woke up to a light drizzle that gave way to a beautiful sunny day by 9:30am. By 10:30 or so we loaded up the dinghy for a ten mile roundtrip excursion to the store at Surge Narrows on Read Island. Surge Narrows runs up to 16 knots, running twice each direction each day with the tides. You can’t run the narrows in a large boat (perhaps at slackwater), but in a dinghy capable of 22 knots or so, it seemed do-able. We ran it with the current going in and it was quite a wild ride—there were whitecaps, strong current and whirlpools everywhere, so we had to carry a lot of speed to keep from losing control of the boat. I would never want to get stuck in something like this in either a large boat or a kayak—the likelihood of going aground in a large boat or getting sucked into a whirlpool and pulled under in a kayak are pretty high. When we finally arrived at the store we were disappointed to see it had been closed. My aunt says remote services are disappearing each year and she thinks it’s due to the increasing size of yachts cruising the area—they have large enough freezers, refrigerators and storage space to stock-up before a trip rather than needing to purchase supplies along the way.
We headed back up Surge Narrows, this time we were running against 10 knots of current, so the progress was much slower. I have to admit, it was a little freaky—the whirlpools here are strong. We ran the dinghy as fast as it would go and made it through without a problem. We made it back to the big boat and took a dip in 65-degree water. It was a little cold at first but after your body went through a little shock it was all good.
On yesterday’s dinghy ride through the Octopus Islands we found a narrow passageway between islands that was only ten feet deep with a sandy bottom and decided that would be a good place to go clamming at low tide. We took some garden trowels and went to work, finding most of them 6-12 inches deep in the sand and came back to the boat with 26 pounds of clams in our bucket. We will submerge them in water for the next few tidal cycles so they spit the sand out and prepare them for dinner.
This is where we went clamming—pic was taken before the tide went out.
Tuesday, Aug 10:
We pulled anchor in the morning and headed out through Hole in the Wall between Maurell and Sonora Islands, across Price Channel and into Raza Passage and east through Pryce Channel to the small cut between East and West Redonda Islands to Walsh Cove. This is one of my favorite places in previous years—the scenery is difficult to beat, the water is warm for swimming and there are plenty of fun islands to poke around in the dinghy. There’s also a wall with Indian pictographs—a Salish ancient burier site—on the far side of Walsh Cove.
Walsh Cove
We pretty much spent the entire day swimming, checking out the adjacent islands via dinghy and Aunt Christine and I took a long dinghy ride out into the main channel to check out the kayaker resort at the beginning of Toba Inlet. We had ribeye steak with garlic potatoes and vegetables for dinner.
Wednesday, Aug 11:
Overnight the currents through Walsh Cove picked up and several boats had to reanchor in the middle of the night. When we woke up our situation didn’t look a whole lot better, the anchor was holding the rock bottom firmly but the scope of the anchor was far from ideal and the sternline that was attached twenty feet up the cliff behind us had gone slack. We decided to pull anchor and head out. We headed south down Waddington Channel and turned the corner around the south end of West Redonda Island and went to the store at Refuge Cove. When I say “store,” this is not a Nugget or Whole Foods Market. This is one of the larger stores around and nearly all of them rely on generator power to keep the lights on and refrigerators cold. As you can imagine their prices reflect and pass on these costs. We did our grocery shopping and ate our first meal out—burgers at the stand at Refuge Cove.
The 'supermarket' that is Refuge Cove:
The NOAA weather reported wind gusts of 35-50 knots in the Johnstone Straits so we changed our game plan…instead of continuing north and dealing with gale force winds we moved east into the protected anchorage of Tenedos Bay, just barely south of Prideaux Haven. Water temperature here was over 70-degrees. We anchored and stern-tied in 75-feet of water with a small bay to ourselves. We took the dinghy to shore and hiked to Unwin Lake, a freshwater lake. We ran into some kayakers who were traveling in a group of eleven—five families with children ranging in age from 6 to 14. They had paddled 11 miles in one shot from Lund to a campground here on the island. Not sure how they got all their gear on their kayaks, they looked better-stocked than some of the grocery stores up here.
Aunt Christine prepared a nice meal with spaghetti and the fresh clams we claimed a couple of days ago. Seafood this fresh is hard to beat.
I will be home in four days. :(
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