Echo Bay – Riveted

Day 7 – Port Harvey to Pierre’s Echo Bay

Laura Domela — Sun, 24 May 2015 03:21:00 +0000

Airship Goes to Alaska – Day 7

This morning at Port Harvey, George was down on the dock delivering fresh homemade cinnamon rolls before we headed out:

How great is this? We've got to stop back by here on our way south.

Next stop: Pierre's at Echo Bay. We headed out of Port Harvey, toward Transit Point, up Havannah Channel and on to Chatham Channel, to Knight Inlet, east of Midsummer Island, below Bonwick Island, past the tribal community at Health Bay, through the Fox Group to Cramer Passage and on to Echo Bay. All was calm and clear for our whole scenic cruise today. It was gray this morning, but by the time we got to Pierre's the clouds disappeared and the sun came out.

Pulling into Pierre's Echo Bay:

Mad Dog Mike, Mark Bunzel, Pierre Landry, and Margaret, assisting the arriving boats:

Cabernet, the Krogen 48, has a dog aboard (named Bailey) and it's always fun to watch the "host dogs" get super excited about having another dog around. This is Pierre's Golden Doodle (Echo) greeting Bailey:

Our new spot (next to Thelonius):

No sooner did we arrive than Mark and Pierre got Kevin involved in helping solve another electrical problem. Here they are figuring out how to patch an electrical main feed that had been crushed by the dock.

John's Weather Forecasting Stone:

Pierre's at Echo Bay has a new hot tub this year (co-sponsored by the Waggoner Guide), and later this season there will be a sauna up there as well. Through this door: hot tub, overlooking the marina:

At 3pm a group of us met up to hike over the hill to Billy Proctor's place and then on to Yvonne Maximchuk's painting/pottery studio. (I'll do a second post about Billy Proctor's museum and Yvonne's studio.)

Last night, Pierre fixed us all up with a giant bowl of fresh caught Dungeness crab and a giant bowl of fresh caught spot prawns and we all brought sides.

Here's Pierre:

It was a great evening, at a great spot!

Our track from today (33.42 nautical miles, 4 hours 43 minutes):

Hiking Sucia Island, and More Chicken ‘n Waffles

Laura Domela — Sat, 25 Apr 2015 22:36:31 +0000

After our kayak excursion around Echo Bay, we took the dinghy in to shore to get a hike in. (That closest white dot there in the bay is us.)

We've done this hike before, and written about it and posted tons of photos before, so I only took a few, but man this is a gorgeous hike:

We're making the "Healthyish Chicken 'n Waffles" for dinner tonight (making sure we have this recipe down on the boat before Tiffani and Deke join us in Alaska). So far so good. I kicked up the spices in the chicken, and made Deke's special spicy wing sauce (to go with the maple syrup, of course).

Tonight is Night No. 120 on the boat! Three weeks until we leave for SE Alaska! Woohoo!

Kayaking Echo Bay

Laura Domela — Sat, 25 Apr 2015 17:06:44 +0000

This morning we left Fossil Bay and headed around the corner to Echo Bay for a change of scenery. We grabbed a mooring ball, made brunch, and then inflated our new Sea Eagle kayak for a test paddle. It's fantastic! We paddled 2.5 miles around the bay:

I love getting up close to these alien landscapes out here:

It's so nice to have a kayak again! This one inflates and deflates really fast, and we were 25 minutes from unhooking it from the top deck to fully inflated, outfitted, and in the water ready to go. Not bad for our first time with it. (And that's with the manual foot pump…just wait 'til we get the electric pump out here!)

And brunch was delicious! A bed of wilted spinach, then fresh crab meat, two poached eggs, topped with hollandaise sauce (awwww, no chives), served with a side of leftover roasted potatoes from last night's dinner, and some greek yogurt with blueberries and raspberries. Super yum, and good fuel for the paddle.

It's still pretty choppy in here, so we might head around to the back side of the island to Shallow Bay, and then get in a nice afternoon hike.

Boatin’ and Hikin’ – Sucia Island

Laura Domela — Sat, 28 Feb 2015 20:22:48 +0000

This morning we decided we'd seen enough of Stuart Island (even though we really hadn't) and we headed for Sucia Island. (It's possible we were also thinking about trying to watch House of Cards, and we were getting very poor cellular and data service in Reid Harbor). We headed toward Fossil Bay on Sucia. It was so beautiful out (and really calm in Reid Harbor). It was a bit rougher outside the harbor, but still not bad (and not the 3-5 foot waves predicted…more like 2-3 foot).

We decided to moor in Shallow Bay at Sucia Island, since we hadn't been there before. Here we are:

We took the dinghy to shore and walked across to check out Echo Bay. We usually stay at Fossil Bay, and have never even seen Echo Bay before. It's big, pretty, and looks like it's ready to party in the summertime. There was only one (very large yacht-style) boat out there today though:

From there, we took a nice 4 mile hike out to Ewing Cove and back. THIS HIKE!! I took way too many photos to show you how pretty it was, so I'll just stop talking and show you:

The trail! It's just like this…the whole way. Love it.

The trail ends at Ewing Cove where there's a nice rocky beach with tons of driftwood, and a marsh of nearby frogs singing some very loud frog songs.

Listen to frogs (and waves) in Ewing Cove, Sucia Island

The trail heading back…still pretty:

When we returned to Shallow Bay, the wind had picked up a bit, but unlike predicted, it was out of the west and straight into the bay. It wasn't terrible, but we decided to stick with the original plan and head over to Fossil Bay for the night.

Mt. Baker looks nice as we are about to round the corner into Fossil Bay:

Here's our hike (and a good overview of what Sucia Island looks like if you're unfamiliar with it). Shallow bay is there on the west side, Echo Bay just across that bit of land to the east, and Fossil Bay is down at the bottom of the map. (If you click to enlarge the image, you'll see that clearly this satellite image was taken in the summer, when every single mooring buoy is occupied by a boat. As this moment, there is one boat in Echo Bay and two other boats here in Fossil Bay. On a clear, sunny, and even warmish Saturday…on the last day of February.)