Shearwater – Riveted

Klemtu to Shearwater | BC

Laura Domela — Mon, 12 Sep 2016 16:49:03 +0000

We left Klemtu on the early side yesterday. The water was smooth and the skies were clear. Gorgeous day to be on the water!

We arrived at Perceval Narrows near max ebb, but the tidal swing is small right now and we estimated we might have as much as 2kts of current with us. As we got closer we kept an eye on our speed as we binoc’d the area between Martha Island and Lizzie Rocks, and it looked fine…a little bit of movement in the water but not much. We went through easily with just below 2kts of current with us. Just like we thought!

Gorgeous in Reid Passage:

A bit of swell (crashing on the rocks) as we came out of Reid Passage and into Seaforth Channel:

We arrived into Shearwater around 3pm, caught up with Christophe (the harbour master) and then headed up to do laundry and get groceries. We did some work while waiting for laundry, and then had dinner up at the pub.

View from dinner (before it got too cold and we moved inside):

We ran into the guys from Dawnbreaker, the big sailboat docked next to us in Kasaan (and then again in Klemtu) and caught up with them after dinner (had a nightcap on Dawnbreaker). We’ll probably see them again tonight in Codville Lagoon…fun bunch of guys!

This morning it’s gorgeous out! Kevin’s finishing up an article and I’m going to make breakfast here in a minute before we head out. Codville Lagoon isn’t far, so it’ll be a short cruise today.

Shearwater, from Airship this morning:

Not sure when we’ll have internet next. Our rough plan is Codville Lagoon tonight, then maybe Pruth Bay or Fury Cove before crossing Cape Caution. We need to look at the weather forecast and that’ll give us an idea how fast or slow we need to be over the next few days. The guys on Dawnbreaker have some other spots between here and there marked on their chart that sound interesting too…so we’ll just play it by ear!

Airship to Alaska | Day 11 | Shearwater to Ocean Falls

Laura Domela — Wed, 18 May 2016 18:19:39 +0000

Airship Goes to Alaska 2016

This morning we slept in (woohoo, 8am!), did a bunch of work, had some breakfast, and then walked up to the market in Shearwater to get a few things for the crab bisque I plan to make tonight or tomorrow night. It was still gray and rainy, but who cares? We're on our way to Alaska. In our boat!

I kind of appreciate this guy's mending job on his shirt:

(I had to use Gorilla Tape to fix my bra last year when we were somewhere out in the boonies in SE Alaska…the underwire poked through the fabric on the side under my arm and was stabbing me. It sort of worked.)

Also, whoa! I think this boat was in need of some zincs. (Too late.) I should have taken a photo of the whole boat. It was pretty great, texturally.

We left Shearwater around 10am after getting a bunch of work done, and wove our way through Gunboat Pass (great name, huh?) and then on to Ocean Falls.

This is Picture Island in Gunboat Passage, so I thought I should take a picture of it:

Gray and calm:

Approaching Ocean Falls:

Before going to the dock we motored over near the dam and set out some crab traps just to the right of it (the same place we caught a ton of crab last year). Here's hoping for a repeat!

Nice view from the end of the dock:

Misty Ocean Falls:

We headed out to walk around but then it started raining pretty hard, so we opted to do some more work instead. I took a ton of photos last year when we were here, so if you're interested, those (plus a bunch of info about the place, including Nearly Normal Norman) can be found here.

A little bit ago a Royal Canadian Mounted Police boat docked in here, and just now an officer came by to say hi (well, and to check us out). He got our passport/Canpass/boat info, filled out a form, chatted with us about about our trip and then off he went. Super friendly…they just like to keep track of foreign boats coming and going (especially in these little out of the way spots like Ocean Falls). He told us if we got "pulled over" any time while in Canada, to just show them the copy of the form and we'd be good to go. Kinda neat.

Our plan for tomorrow is to pick up the crab traps on the way out (around 7am), and then head for Perceval Narrows to arrive at slack, and then probably anchor tomorrow night in Rescue Bay. We'll see how the weather looks in the morning!

Here's today's route (22.9 nautical miles, 3 hours 14 minutes):

Airship to Alaska | Day 10 | Fury Cove to Shearwater BC

Laura Domela — Tue, 17 May 2016 17:24:13 +0000

Airship Goes to Alaska 2016

Our Cape Caution crossing yesterday was nice and calm and uneventful, just like we like it!

We weren't planning to cut through the Walker Group, but as we passed by that inviting opening, I decided to cut through after all. It's so pretty in there!! Kevin was napping but the change in rpms woke him up so he came up for a few minutes while we meandered through the rocky islets.

Just past the Walker Group a bit, I saw what looked like a bunch of debris in the water. Turns out, it was not debris. It was HUNDREDS OF OTTERS! To the north:

And to the south:

We got to Fury Cove and there were four other boats in there. One we knew, three we didn't.

We put our crab traps out and then stopped to say hi to Kim and Ken (on their cool big catamaran called an AfriCat). The plan for later (with Gill and Ray on the sailboat next door) was to meet on the beach at 4:30 for happy hour. By the time 4:30 came around the sun had come out and the wind had died down and we had a lovely gathering on the beach.

Kevin dropped me off at Airship to start dinner and went to check/gather crab traps (no crab). Next up: a drone flight over the cove for some pictures!

Fury Cove is great because it's nice and protected, but you can see right out into Fitz Hugh Sound to check conditions visually:

We decided to head out early in the morning today to get up to Shearwater (we left just after 6am). The cruise was calm and gray and a bit drizzly, but fine.

We saw a few spouts today at the north end of Fitz Hugh Sound, but then didn't see anything for quite a while. Kevin went down to shower, and then (of course) bam! Two huge tail slaps…big ones, where a whole lot of the whale is out of the water. It was so cool!!! But all I got was this:

Here's yesterday's map, from Port McNeill to Fury Cove (68.3 nautical miles 9 hours 9 minutes):

Here's today's map from Fury Cove to Shearwater (51.7 nautical miles, 6 hours 39 minutes):

And now, we're at Shearwater (with internet!). We did a load of laundry and sat at the pub and worked and had some lunch and a beer while the laundry did its thing. We'll probably go back up for dinner later on. Here's a link to last year's post from Shearwater, when the weather was nice and pictures could be taken…it's too gray and rainy now.

Not sure yet of tomorrow's destination. We'll figure that out tonight!

Catching Up (and, we are now past Cape Caution!)

Laura Domela — Fri, 11 Sep 2015 20:41:00 +0000

Shearwater, Pruth Bay, and Sullivan Bay, BC

While in Shearwater on Wednesday afternoon we got a few groceries at the market there, and hung out at the Fisherman's Bar & Grill and worked for a few hours. Shearwater is great, but the internet there kinda sucks. The free internet didn't work at all, so we splurged on the "Premium" internet (13 bucks) which only barely worked (but none of it worked from the dock). Oh well.

We were hanging out after dinner with a glass of wine and our books when we got a knock on the door. It was Ray and Denise, who've also been exploring Alaska by boat all summer. They follow the blog and we've kept up via email, but until Shearwater BC we'd never been in the same place at the same time (save one night in Juneau when we were on the hard and they were leaving early the next morning). It was great to finally meet in person! We were both heading south and decided we'd both head to Pruth Bay together in the morning if the weather forecast for crossing Cape Caution and the open waters of Queen Charlotte Sound continued to look good.

The weather for crossing on Friday looked good, so we headed to Pruth Bay on Thursday. Thursday was warm and gorgeous at Shearwater as we headed out.

Passing Bella Bella:

The cruise to Pruth Bay down Fitz Hugh Sound looked mostly like this:

Until we turned into Kwakshua Channel, where we eventually were running in some pretty dense fog. Ray and Denise were already anchored in Pruth Bay when we arrived. We saw them on radar long before we saw the actual boat:

We anchored a little further into the head of the bay and then got in the dinghy to go to shore and explore a bit.

The dock for the Hakai Beach Institute:

The Hakai Institute is a research center specializing in long term ecological research. It has active research programs in archaeology, earth sciences, terrestrial ecology, and marine ecology.

They have internet that they let visitors use (and it gets all the way out to the boat!) There's a 100MB cap per device, but we just needed to check weather in the morning so it was plenty!

We decided to hike over to West Beach. The trails are a nicely kept up combination of boardwalk and gravel/dirt:

We've been told that West Beach is one of the most beautiful beaches on the coast here, with white sand beaches and gorgeous ocean views. Unfortunately, it was still totally socked in with fog, but it was still very pretty. I'd like to come back when it's sunny though!

These rocks look a little too Disney, don't you think? All those straight lines look kinda fakey.

A pixely log:

Sand and fog:

Back at the dinghy dock I managed to get a couple of cool jellyfish photos:

Hey, we've got a new neighbor:

We got back to the boat and were in the middle of cooking dinner and just like that, the fog went away.

We invited Denise and Ray over for a glass of wine after dinner…we had fun catching up and telling Alaska stories.

Here's our route from Shearwater to Pruth Bay (44.1 nautical miles):

We set the alarm for 3:55am the next morning (Friday) so we could get up and check the 4am forecast for Queen Charlotte and Cape Caution. All looked good so we pulled our anchor and headed slowly out in the dark and the fog. It was a little eerie…we've never been in these conditions before in our boat. The other times we left at 4am it was earlier in the summer and not actually dark. Here, it was dark. We just went slow, watched the radar, and Kevin did bow watch until it brightened up enough to see any logs from inside the pilot house. It helped that our first stretch was this long 4.5 mile channel, too, but it was still trippy.

I made us some breakfast eventually and then went down to take a nap. I came back up and swapped with Kevin so he could go get a little nap as well. Most of our day today looked like this:

Here's us, crossing Cape Caution (quite a bit more chill than on our way up…6ft waves 4 seconds apart):

We had one short stretch with some gentle 3ft swells and a little bit of chop on top of that (about a foot) but it was calm and foggy for the majority of the day. As we rounded Cape Caution and turned into Queen Charlotte Strait, not much changed either. Due to the pleasant conditions (and the gale warning on deck for tomorrow) we opted to go all the way to Sullivan Bay today, to get in out of the Strait. Today's cruise was 84 miles of pretty boring scenery, but I'll take it!

On our way into Sullivan Bay we stopped to watch a single humpback lunge feeding.

Sullivan Bay is really cute. It's a nice marina with a general store and a restaurant and fuel and stuff, surrounded by a little floating home community.

They are pretty much closed for the summer now though, so we'll head out tomorrow sometime. I tried to see if there was an opening for dinner at Nimmo Bay, but they're booked until September 17th. (Check out their gig…it looks amazing!)

So tomorrow we may head over to Pierre's at Echo Bay…then maybe Kwatsi Bay, then back by Port Harvey…not sure yet. We'll see how the weather looks.

Here's our route from Pruth Bay to Sullivan Bay, crossing Cape Caution (84.5 nautical miles!):

Day 13 – Shearwater to Rescue Bay

Laura Domela — Sat, 30 May 2015 00:21:00 +0000

Airship Goes to Alaska – Day 13

Today was a 34 mile passage from Shearwater to Rescue Bay. We left Shearwater at 8am and went through Perceval Narrows (20 miles away) at slack tide. Once again the morning started out gray with low clouds and ended up warm and sunny.

This is one of two eagles at Shearwater that were hanging out in a short tree on the waterfront waiting for handouts:

Also, in yesterday’s post I forgot to include this photo of the large mural here in Shearwater depicting some of the important people in Shearwater history (painted by Paul Ygartua).

Scenic Reid Passage in grays:

And now with some sun:

Rescue Bay is large and there’s room for many boats.

We all anchored and settled in for an afternoon with no plans. Here’s Larry’s very photogenic Monk, at anchor in Rescue Bay:

We set out two crab traps and then went exploring by dinghy.

Near the opening to the bay there were a whole bunch of seals hanging out and splashing around. We went over to get a closer look, but the seals stopped what they were doing to get a closer look at us.

We checked the crab traps and we’d caught one very large Dungeness (7.5 inches) and a feisty, too-small male. We left the crab traps in for a couple more hours, checking twice, and only came up with another female and another too-small male.

We cooked this guy up with a small side of tortellini and some grilled zucchini.

Here's today's track (33.5 nautical miles):

Next stop: Fjordland!

Days 11-12 Ocean Falls to Shearwater & Bella Bella

Laura Domela — Fri, 29 May 2015 01:50:48 +0000

Airship Goes to Alaska – Days 11-12

We left Ocean Falls on Wednesday morning and headed for Shearwater, about 20nm away.

Passing through Gunboat Passage:

Most mornings it starts out gray and misty and then is sunny by early afternoon. This day was no different.

Arriving at Shearwater:

Our new spot on the dock:

Shearwater marina:

Kevin and I headed up to Fishermen's Pub to have some lunch and do some work. We put in two loads of laundry across the way, and also did a bit of grocery shopping in the middle of all that. It was a productive afternoon. The group met for dinner at the pub and it was another fun evening of conversation and laughing. It's a good group!

Lobby of the pub:

After dinner, some of us grabbed our chairs and sat on the dock for sunset and another glass of wine:

This morning a group of us took the water taxi over to Bella Bella.

Bella Bella, also known as Waglisla, is the home of the Heiltsuk (indigenous people of the Central Coast region of British Columbia) , and is an unincorporated community and Indian Reserve community located within Bella Bella Indian Reserve No. 1 on the east coast of Campbell Island in the Central Coast region of British Columbia. More about Bella Bella here.

Our water taxi:

We wandered around the village for a bit and met a few locals. The grocery store (Band Store) in Bella Bella is a bit better than the one in Shearwater…more produce, more selection. They even had wasabi seaweed snacks!

The community center and school:

Exterior of the school and community center:

Totem:

Inside the Elder's Hall, these portraits were painted by Paul Ygartua.

Back at Shearwater:

We had another lovely potluck on the dock tonight. The marina delivered a grill to our dock, and everyone brought things to grill and side dishes. We made crab enchiladas (because…4 large Dungeness crabs!) All of the food was great, as usual. And the weather did not suck at all.

Tomorrow we're headed for Rescue Bay.