Stryker Island

July 28th (Sunday)
It was a beautiful sunny morning when we pulled up anchor and headed to our next anchorage on Stryker Island. The water was glassy calm as we motored down Codfish Channel. It was just a short move of only about 6 nautical miles, but we were very glad it was glassy calm as the surface of the water was almost literally covered in a mixture of kelp, weeds, and logs of all sizes. It was like manoeuvring through a minefield. 

After rounding the tip of Stryker Island we headed up into the anchorage inside the heart of the Island and as we went we placed a line of marker pins on Navionics on my phone based on the actual depth readings in certain locations from our depth finder on our boat. We have found that this is the best way to find suitable spots for our prawn traps so as to avoid dropping it down in an uncharted hole that turns out to be too deep for the length of our rope. It’s really annoying when we have to pull it back up to put it somewhere shallower. Luckily this has not happened often.

Anchorage at Stryker Island. 

After we were anchored and had had some lunch, we headed out in Kiki. We set our crab trap, as well as two prawn traps, so we had our fingers crossed.  We enjoyed the beautiful day on the water, and did some exploratory fishing. We ended up keeping two good-sized Rockfish. 

It is such a spectacularly beautiful area here, and one super cool thing is that we saw some sea otters. They are cautious and shy, so we did not get a very good view of them from our tender, but hopefully we will while kayaking tomorrow. 

On our way back home we pulled in at a cool beach area to deal with the fish, and found a very old cabin hidden up in the woods. It was already late so we did not explore much, but we can’t wait to explore more. There is so much to see here. It is such an amazing area!!
Back home we got to watch the sun set from our boat. It’s not very often that we can see the sun set so well from an anchorage around here. It was beautiful. As the evening light started to slip away a sea otter came into our anchorage. He seemed completely oblivious or unconcerned by us, and swam his way around diving and feeding. Unfortunately with the low light it was hard to see him well, but we could clearly hear him crunching away on shells. So amazing to be anchored in a place where a sea otter comes in to feed.

July 29th (Monday)
It was a magically wonderful day. It was one of those days where I found my self smiling, kayaking along and smiling because everything was so wonderful. 

Before we even left home in the morning our day was awesome, it started when Jason went outside to put the kayaks into the water. We had gotten up at 06:00, and had a lunch and everything already packed for a day of exploring. When J went out he soon came back to the cockpit to tell me our sea otter was back feeding. The otter was off of our starboard side, and although the lighting was not perfect for pictures it was quite good for watching him, and we could see him clearly. We watched as he came up from a dive with a fresh grab of food. He had a mid sized crab on his stomach and something else that he was munching on right away, crunch, crunch, crunch. The crab would start to walk to the side of his tummy, and just before it got to the edge, without looking, the sea otter would grab it and put it back in the middle; this happened time and time again as he swam along and each time he moved the crab back to centre without even pausing his munching. 

Sea otters seem to always be in a state of motion. They are always moving, always swimming, eating, scrubbing themselves with their cute little paws, turning and rolling, and diving. When they are feeding, even with more food on their stomach, about every 15 seconds, even if they are in the middle of munching, they will turn and roll in the water and then come right back onto their back and continue munching. We watched in awe as he fed not far away.

Eventually we continued our prep for leaving and were surprised that even Jason's movements on deck did not phase him. Shorty after J came to call me again to say that the sea otter was getting very close to us. I grabbed my camera again and went out on deck to see him approaching our stern line from the side. He was swimming along on his back eating, and was about to bump into the first of our lines that was sitting on the surface of the water since the tide was low. As he touched the first line I took the first picture, and the noise of the shutter made him look with a start. 

A surprised Sea Otter. 

I thought for sure that would have scared him, and he would be gone. He dove over our first line, and then to my surprise he came right back up and started munching once again. Now when I took picture-after-picture, and the shutter went off time and time again, he did not even stop to look. It was so awesome! He was so close, and some of the pictures turned out really well. I even got one of him after I had startled him, and the expression is priceless.

 Sea Otter with crab and clam on its belly.

We headed out in our kayaks talking about how cool the encounter was. The water was glassy calm and so we wanted to take advantage of the calmness and get out to the outer islands of the McMullin Group. Although we followed the shorelines, we also made much more of a direct route out than we normally would. As we paddled we were amazed by the number of kelp beds, and in and around most of them was a sea otter or two, or three, or four. Some of them were quite nervous and shy, but others were more curious.  

Sea Otter amongst the kelp. 

They would lift their heads up high out of the water to look at us, and when they did this they always had their cute little paws up out of the water too. It was so amazing to finally be in an area with so many sea otters, and to be able to paddle along and see them all around. 

We were also seeing a type of bird that looked, and flew, just like a piper, that was landing on the water and pecking things up. Since being back home we have identified them as Northern Phalarope birds. 

Northern Phalarope and its reflection. 

They were very much like pipers in all respects, including how they would take off and flit from here to there and land and then fly again, they were also not nervous at all, and they would come quite close to us to feed. When they took off, even though they were in the water, they would simply lift up out of the water as though they were able to push off. Sometimes there would be just a few of them together, but other times we saw large groups of 20-30 birds. They were very cute and fun to watch. 

Jason amongst the Northern Phalarope.

A small outer island.

When we made it out to the outer islands we started to explore the shorelines in more detail. 

We came to one most outer island that had a large ridge beach of very smooth rounded rocks. This ridge of tumbled rocks connected two otherwise separate solid rocky islands. The rocks were quite neat, and Jason broke open one large igneous rock and found a quartz crystal inside. The solid rocky islands that this tumbled rock beach connected were composed of octagonal black rock columns, very much like the Giants Causeway in Ireland. It was a very neat area.

 Outer beach of one of the islands.

As we were paddling the almost 2 nautical miles back to the main grouping of outer islands, we saw a whale blowing in the distance. Back at the main group we were surprised to find many beautiful sand beaches. We took the time to explore a few of these, and enjoyed our lunch break on one particularly nice beach that had a tidal sand spit that stretched out from it to connect it to a small rocky island. There was sand everywhere in these areas and we could often see in the water way down below us to the sand far below. 

Inside beach of the same island.

On shore at our lunch spot we were very surprised to see a lot of apple trees all lining the shoreline. Of course they were old and untended, but most of them had many apples growing on them. We also found bushes of large, ripe, and delicious huckleberries. I picked us a bag of them to take home.

One thing that we found quite interesting was that some of the sand in the tidal areas of this beach, but not all, was fluffy. It was like when you whip butter and sugar, and it gets all airy. When we stepped on it we would sink in up to our ankles, but it was not like sinking into mud as we did not get stuck, we could easily step free. When we stepped in similar places that were underwater a large number of bubbles would be released from within the sand. It was very novel. 

As we paddled home we took in the beauty of the islands around us. When we got close to home the wind started to pick up and it started to shower, but we made it back home before it actually started to rain and blow. We were very lucky with the weather we had as it remained almost glassy calm for our whole 8.5 hour and 13 nautical mile paddle.



(Sheya's mom writing: As you might have guessed by now, I received new updates and pictures from Sheya as they are back at Calvert Island. She informed me that Jason's parents had discovered that when Sheya and Jason are anchored near the Hakai Institute's dock on Calvert Island, that we can look at the webcam for the dock and see the boats anchored in Pruth Bay. Currently the Red Witch is anchored on the right hand side of the bay. Here is the link if you want to have a look, and if you refresh the link throughout the day you can see the changes that occur in the weather, number of other boats, etc. With a little bit of exploring of the web link you can also find other webcam links. Thank you, Jason's parents, for the information.  https://www.hakai.org/live-webcams/#webcams-1)