I might have waaay overslept this morning...enough so that the others had been out fishing for hours before I woke up. They had been out in the dinghy since 6:00 a.m. with no luck and when Trenton decided two or three hours later to drop his line in the water from the bow of the Sanddollar he immediately hooked a huge ling cod. The rest of us couldn’t believe the luck. They are not the cutest fish ever but they sure taste amazing.
The NOAA weather radio is still reporting gale force winds on the Johnstone Straits. My seaplane ride home is scheduled out of Nanaimo on Vancouver Island and we have to cross the Straits to get there. That’s two day’s travel and the way things are looking there is no way we will make it. In Tenedos Bay we are far from a working phone and there are no yachts with unlocked internet connections, so we are moving south toward Lund, B.C. where a few more services are available.
We arrived in Lund, refilled the fresh water supply and tied up to the dock outside of the small community. Lund, B.C. has the distinction of marking the beginning of U.S. Highway 1 which extends down to southern Chile. A “mile marker 0” display in town proudly displays this fact. There is a landline phone and internet here and I was successful in moving my Kenmore flight 75 miles to the northeast out of Bliss Landing. Following a nice little chat with the woman on the other end of the line they waived the $75 change fee since I apparently have “preferred status.” Not sure what that means but it’s probably better than being on the “no fly list.”
With the stress of missing two flights lifted off my shoulders we strolled into the bar and restaurant to catch up on email. They offered it to us for free so we decided we should order some drinks. Along with a couple of rounds of drinks some halibut fish and chips found their way in front of me. With all the above now consumed we checked out the store, some of the new restaurant offerings, the wharf and setup reservations for our kayak rental for the next couple of days.
It was a bit of a rough night on the boat that night. At anchor the boat naturally points its bow into the waves and you don’t notice the chop through the night. Being tied to a dock is a completely different story, with waves coming at the beam and the boat moving up and down against the dock, along with the noise of the other boats doing the same makes for a less peaceful night. I slept well, I just recall some of the motion more-so than other nights.
The Sanddollar tied to the dock in Lund:
Friday, Aug 13:
We picked up our rental kayaks this morning from probably the biggest pot smoker on earth. Ask the guy the simplest question and after a huge amount of thought he would reply in a tone of voice that was so mellow you’d be half asleep before he finished the sentence. We limited our questions to the bare essentials and got them down to the boat. It took 40 minutes or so to get the kayaks loaded on the boat, utilizing the davit (crane on the top of the boat) to winch them up and rope them down to the pilothouse. Our plan is to anchor in the middle of the Copeland Islands, affording us great views and a great homebase for day-paddling. We found an anchorage in 45 feet of water in a cove with a small island in front, which should block boat wakes from reaching us through the Thulin Passage. Because the cove is small there isn’t enough room for the boat to pivot around its anchor with the tide so we had to also stern-tie to some rocks behind us to lock the boat in place. By noon or so the kayaks were in the water and we were off for our adventure.
The Copeland Islands are a popular paddling destination. There are many small islands clustered together that offer constant changing scenery, there are coves and reliefs in the shoreline that you can paddle into and poke around (some going dry at slack tide, which is fun for clamming), the tides and currents are relatively low in this area compared to further north, the end of Highway 1 in Lund means this is as far north as you can go on Coastal B.C. without a boat or seaplane and there are kayak rental shops in town. We paddled around all of the islands north of the boat, leaving the southern stretch for the next day. We came back to the boat, did some swimming and had brazed lamb with lentils mixed with red peppers and onion for dinner.
Saturday, Aug 14:
We started my last day on the boat with breakfast and a paddle around the southern Copeland Islands, not quite getting to see all of them before heading back to the boat to pack. The last day on the boat is always a sad day for me. My Kenmore reservation is out of Bliss Landing, about a 10 minute dinghy ride north and the flight leaves at 1:30pm but they want me there by 1:00pm. I say my goodbyes and watch the Sanddollar slowly disappear as we motor away in the dinghy. Trenton and Uncle Raymond are waving from the pilothouse and I sort of chuckle at all of the kayaks and dinghies tied up to the Sanddollar. We make it to Bliss Landing about 40 minutes early and much to my surprise see the seaplane sitting there. I checked the paperwork to make sure I wasn’t late…we were in the bay now and subject to the 5 mph no wake zone, so it seemed to take forever to get there. The plane was completely opened up with no pilot present. That gave us a chance to take a few pictures before the pilot greeted us and started dealing with luggage and checking my passport information for customs clearance. The pilot tells me I can have any seat in the house so obviously I was excited to grab co-pilot seat. I have some weird fascination with all things mechanical, so it was a treat for me to sit there and watch the pilot move switches and levers, not to mention the great view I had out the front and sides of the plane.
The planes Kenmore flies, the De Havilland Beaver, are world famous for being the very best bushplanes ever made; production started in 1948. The Beaver was designed for flight in rugged and remote areas of the world. Its short takeoff and landing capability made it ideal for areas normally only accessible by canoe or foot and they can be equipped with skis or floats. Because they were designed to fly into remote locations, often in cold climates, its oil reservoir filler is located in the cockpit and oil can be filled in flight--this would be a nice feature in some of the cars I’ve rented. There is something about these planes and their history that I just love. Kenmore not only services and rebuilds their own aircraft, but they purchase every Beaver they can find, wrecked or not, and do custom restorations. They even mill some of their own parts that are no longer in production. They are also famous for extending the fuselage to accommodate two more passengers (up to eight from six) and they retrofit a jet turbine engine in place of the original Pratt and Whitney radial engines. The plane I am flying in today has the jet turbine conversion.
After a quick safety information pep-talk the pilot unlashes the mooring rope connecting the floats of the plane to the dock, spins up the turbine and we taxi out of the bay toward open water. The pilot rolls the throttle to full and we bounce along the surface of the water and into the air, the loud rush of the turbine making sealife scatter. We fly at 1,000 feet and put back down in the water at Refuge Cove—the little store I photographed earlier in the trip—to pick up one more person. Like me, she had been out with family cruising for a couple of weeks. We take off again and begin the 50 minute flight to Nanaimo, where I should have been departing had the weather been more cooperative. We fly over the Copeland Islands and I spot the Sanddollar at anchor, nestled between two other boats in the bay. All I can say is it’s breath-taking up here…the scenery just does not get better than this and I’m loving the flight. We pass over Savary Island, one of my favorite places in the world, Texada and Lasqueti Islands with the neat Bull Passage anchorage laying in-between and we land in the water in Nanaimo and de-board the plane so it can be refueled. I was talking to the guy refueling the plane and he said Kenmore’s bill just to top off the middle tank on the plane with JET-A fuel would be $400. He says Kenmore brings in six planes per day to that location and pumps around $4,000 per fuel just at that location alone. I’m not sure flying is the cheapest hobby a person can have.
From the air--the Sandollar (2nd boat from the right) at anchor in the Copeland Islands:
Savary Island:
We take off again with another hour left in the flight back to Seattle. We pass over Gabriola and Thetis Islands and I can spot the cool town of Ganges on Salt Spring Island out the pilot’s window. I can see the San Juan Islands in the distance so I know we will be back in the U.S. any minute now. After passing over Anacortes I can spot Puget Sound and the Seattle city line in the distance. We circle Lake Washington for our final approach and I spot the Space Needle and the impressive Mt. Rainier. Our low final approach afforded some great views of the Microsoft millionaire’s homes on the lake front and we set down on the water…the mass of boats in our landing path dispersing quickly when the pilot hit the landing strobes and feathered the prop to be as noisy and visible and let those below us know “you had better move!” I waited on the custom’s dock for my final inspection, reality now setting in that I’m back to work in two days.
Final approach, Lake Washington:
My family I left behind will be on the boat for another two weeks, spreading their time between Desolation Sound and the San Juan Islands. I will never take for granted the opportunities they have given me year after year—I recognize the uniqueness in being able to spend up to a month aboard a private boat, cruising remote islands and experiencing the local island culture that few people get to see, eating my Aunt’s absolutely amazing cooking and enjoying dinghy rides, kayaking and hiking with them, as well as late-night card games (Spite & Malice) while we sit in some of the most amazing country I have ever seen. To Aunt Christine and Uncle Raymond, thank you so much and I look forward to hearing about the second half of your trip!
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