More Melanie Cove Shenanigans | BC

Laura Domela — Fri, 23 Sep 2016 02:58:54 +0000

We took the Inspire 1 up this afternoon for some aerial photos. My camera controller was glitching out a little bit, but I managed to take a few nice overhead shots that should give you a good sense of this place:

After doing some more work, we decided to go hike some of the trails here from the head of Melanie Cove. If you’ve read the book The Curve of Time by M. Wylie Blanchet, you’ll know about Phil the Frenchman’s cabin right here in this area.

[About the book, from amazon.com: The Curve of Time is a biography and astonishing adventure story of a woman who, left a widow in 1927, packed her five children onto a 25-foot boat and cruised the coastal waters of British Columbia, summer after summer.Muriel Wylie Blanchet acted single-handedly as skipper, navigator, engineer and, of course, mum, as she saw her crew through encounters with tides, fog, storms, rapids, cougars and bears. She sharpened in her children a special interest in Haida culture and in nature itself. In this book, she left us with a sensitive and compelling account of their journeys.]

Anyway, we kayaked over to the trailhead here in our cove.

Cultural Heritage site? Aboriginal artifacts? Wow! This might be a more interesting hike than we’d originally thought! Just a few steps up the trail and there’s an outhouse and a fork…we took the right fork and headed for Laura Cove. The trail is good, but then in many (MANY) parts of it, there are downed trees that you scramble over or crouch and crawl under. It’s pretty fun for the first mile or so. The trail…straight ahead, under these trees:

This part was like those parts of the obstacle course/boot camp game shows where young buff dudes high-knee over fences:

Cool fungi:

We eventually came to a little stream that babbled out into the head of Laura Cove (where we’d kayaked just this morning). Okay, cool…pretty. No artifacts, no cabin. Maybe the cabin was on the trail that went left at the fork. So we headed back and then took that fork. Well…that fork…goes up up up and then down down down and then up and then down and then up some more and then way down. The whole time you climb over rocks and logs and man are my legs getting tired. We never saw any cabin or artifacts or anything like that at all. But the views were lovely:

We made it back to the kayak after about a 3.5 mile hike. (This is about half a mile less than the hike we normally do at home every morning, but holy moly all that up and down and log climbing and rock scrambling! Legs. Tired.)

Back at Airship I googled the dang cabin and it sounds like the remains are at the head of Laura Cove. JUST WHERE WE WERE EARLY TODAY. Twice!! Fine then. Maybe we’ll dinghy back over there in the morning before Kevin’s conference call.

Dinner tonight is Cilantro Thai Grilled Chicken (chicken breasts, chopped garlic, 1/2 c cilantro, 2T fish sauce, 1T sesame oil, marinate all together for half an hour and then grill), roasted baby potatoes and sautéed green beans.

We’re not sure yet where we’ll go tomorrow…maybe Lund? Maybe another anchorage we haven’t been to.

Melanie Cove | Desolation Sound | BC

Laura Domela — Thu, 22 Sep 2016 20:13:20 +0000

After our stop at Mitlenatch Island yesterday, we continued on to Melanie Cove, inside of Desolation Sound Marine Provincial Park.

There are three areas to anchor in Desolation Sound Marine Park: Prideaux Haven, Melanie Cove, and Laura Cove. There were 4 or 5 boats in Prideaux Haven, and 5 boats in Melanie Cove when we arrived last night (which seems a like a lot for end of September). We anchored in about 35 feet with plenty of room and no need to stern tie. (A stern tie is a line attached to something on shore like a tree or boulder or a nice chain like the one pictured below, that acts as a second anchor and limits the swing of your boat. It’s common practice in tighter, more popular anchorages.) Over on the opposite side of the cove there are some really nice stern tie chains attached to the rock:

After we got settled, I made us a quick dinner (gnocchi with sauteed mushrooms and the last of the truffled pesto sauce, with a spinach salad). We met Norm and Jane from a super cute blue-hulled Nordic Tug called Toot Sweet (they were stern tied on the opposite side of the cove and came by to say hi).

This morning we woke up to this view:

I suggested we have a quick coffee and then go kayaking before breakfast and while it was so calm and beautiful out, which turned out to be a very good good call!

That’s a little Ranger Tug anchored over in the shallow area of Laura Cove, in the middle of this next shot:

This is one of the most spectacular places to kayak, especially in this weather. Every time we stopped paddling it was absolutely silent, save for a few bird sounds or the burble of a nearby waterfall. We paddled over to Laura Cove and around a bunch of little islands and inlets. The tide was high, so all the green areas on the chart were easily passable by kayak. Here’s our track, starting and finishing at Airship in Melanie Cove (just over 3 miles total):

There’s a trailhead at the head of Melanie Cove that I think we’ll explore after we get some more work done. I made us a sort of huevos rancheros for brunch this morning (crunchy chipotle tostada on the bottom, black beans, grated cheese, over easy egg, homemade salsa, with a couple slices of avocado on top) and it was yum! Now we’re just working here on Airship. There’s only one other boat in the cove with us now and it’s VERY quiet. The wind is supposed to pick up this afternoon but calm again by tomorrow afternoon, and the weekend looks like a great time to make our way down the Strait of Georgia (WITHOUT the conditions we had last year for this part of our trip).

Melanie Cove – Riveted

More Melanie Cove Shenanigans | BC

Melanie Cove | Desolation Sound | BC