Cruising Adventures of the Red Witch

June 22nd (Saturday) Well the days are getting shorter now, and it seems summer may be over on the central coast of BC. Although today was forecasted to be somewhat nice, we woke up to a cold rain that turned to drizzle. We decided to leave more beach exploring to another day, and go fishing instead.  At first we fished off of a small island across from the start of Meay Inlet. We were catching smallish Rockfish, but it was promising. Then I caught a fish that put up a good fight. Just before it got to the boat it suddenly took off in a circle right under the boat, and my line broke. I think it must have cut on the prop of our outboard. We never even got to see what type of fish it was. Bye-bye first jig :(. Then J caught a Lingcod that was 25", so we let it go. Then we heard a sound, and looked to see a large salmon jump; it came well out of the water, and we could see its beautiful colours and distinct pink line of colouring. We went over and did some casts and then did some ...

June 20th (Thursday) We woke up to a beautiful sunny day!  We did some last minute chores with the ease of having fresh running water, and then left Dawson’s Landing, and headed down Darby Channel. When we got to Fitz Hugh Sound we decided to do some sailing. It was more as something to do on a beautiful windy day rather than as a way to get to our destination, as the wind was directly against us.  It sure was nice to be clipping along to just the sounds of the wind and the water, and it turns out that without our engine running we seem to be able to sneak up on sea otters. We saw a whole bunch of them in a group, just floating around. From a distance we thought they were logs, then maybe birds, then we realized what they were just a bit before they realized that we were approaching. They flipped over and dove, and then all popped up behind us and stuck their heads up looking after us. So cute!!!   Later as we tacked our way back and forth across the sound we saw a...

June 19th  (Wednesday) This morning we pulled up anchor, and left Fury Cove in the rain. We headed up Rivers Inlet, and rode the 2 meter swells up until the first bend, where they all lost their strength. We came up this way specifically for Dawson’s Landing, which is a small floating place tucked against the steep shoreline of Darby Channel, right where it joins into Rivers Inlet.  It is a service station for all of the fishing lodges in the area, and therefore was unusually well stocked. We have found that all of the places that we have visited for fuel so far have had next to nothing for supplies. Dawson’s Landing was actually quite well stocked, and we were able to replenish our supply of jigs, which was the main motivation for coming up here. We also stocked up on some other items, and even got some fresh fruit and vegetables, as well as filling up our diesel and gas tanks.   While waiting to fuel up we saw a humpback whale out in the inlet.  The owners w...

June 17 (Monday) It was a rainy day, and since we woke up still feeling tired it suited us just fine to have an inside relaxing day. We had the fire going, and Jason made us baked beans on the fire that smelled delicious. We enjoyed them with biscuits for dinner.  Jason's homemade beans. I have been working on sorting pictures. I try to stay on top of sorting and deleting pictures, going through the new ones every week or so. I always seem to manage to take so many pictures, but I think I have been doing an alright job of deleting. It is enjoyable to go through them and see the best of the ones from our last few anchorages. Over the course of the day most of the boats that came in yesterday left, and new ones arrived. By evening there were 12 other boats here -- our busiest anchorage so far of the trip. We would not have guessed our busiest anchorage would be here, where are they all going? They come one after another, anchor, spend the night, and leave the next day. So st...

June 15 (Saturday) Well, today was an excitement filled morning! We headed out in Kiki for some early morning fishing. The wind was light, there was no fog, just clouds, and the swells were smaller than the other day, and so we headed out to McEwan Rock. The rock had a lot of seagulls and eagles on it; probably about 15 eagles. We dropped our hooks and started fish, and soon we noticed a pod of orca whales out past the rock. They seemed to be heading in our general direction so instead of going out to them we continued fish and watched them surfacing. We caught a Kelp Greenling that got away right at the boat, and then we caught a Lingcod, which we let go because it was just under legal size.  The orcas had gone on to the opposite side of the rock so we puttered our way to the lower end and sat and waited, watching them make their way along. It looked like there were four or six of them, and one had a massive dorsal fin, so straight and tall! It looked like there may have been o...

June 14 (Friday) In the morning we made some hot tea, and took it with us in our kayaks for an early morning paddle. It was a beautiful sunny morning, no fog, which was a first in awhile, and also different than forecasted. We headed for the northern and larger of the lagoons here, and since the tide was low there was a waterfall flowing out. Bubbles from the waterfall heading into the lagoon. We were able to find a spot to get out just down from the turbulence from the falls, and portaged our kayaks, one at a time, over the slippery and somewhat unstable jumble of rocks covered in very sharp barnacles.   There are several different types of barnacles, I can't remember all of their names, but the ones that were at the rapids are the ones we have come to expect near areas of continual current. They are much longer and have razor sharp edges, much more dangerous than the regular seashore barnacle. We both got minor cuts from them, and we have decided that leather gloves...

June 12 (Wednesday). We were up fairly early to check out the fog, and saw that it looked like it was sitting fairly high. Our visibility was good. We decided to get ready, and move anchorages. We pulled up our anchor, and headed out with a well-planned set of way-points on the chart for carefully making our way through the mass of reefs and islets. We decided that instead of going out and around everything, which would take us out into the denser fog and also the channel for other boats, that we would take the maze instead.  We saw porpoises off our starboard side when we were passing between two islands.  As we made our way more out towards open water the swells got larger. When we were passing on the inside of Mayor Island the swells were hitting Bramham Island and bouncing off and ricocheting between the two islands, creating quite the jumble of swells. Once we were out a little further we were just getting the swells, which according to the weather were 2 meters. C...

On June 9 th (Sunday) we raised anchor in Blunden Harbour at 06:45 and headed into Queen Charlotte Strait. Although South East winds were forecasted there was no wind and the water was a milky looking glass and, except for the swells, our trip was flat calm. We spotted a frenzy of birds in the distance, and as we approached it became clear that they were all eagles. There were probably at least 25 of them, and we could see more on their way. Two flew right across our path on a beeline for the action. The eagles were circling and then swooping and dropping right down to the water, talons out to grab something. They were doing this in a continual line approach one after the other. The odd thing was that there was no evidence of them actually eating anything, and none of them seemed to be flying away with their talons full. It was most peculiar. We came into Allison Harbour, and anchored in a small bay that we have now named Moon Jelly Bay because of the incredible number of Moon jellyfi...