Seven Months Out

December 1st (Sunday)

It has been seven full months since we left Vancouver, and the adventures have been numerous.  Life is full of memories, new experiences, and cool wildlife encounters. We are twenty days away from the shortest day of the year, and then the days start getting longer again.  So far we both agree that the positives to having stayed north for the winter outweigh the negatives, so life is good!
We were forecasted to get rain and wind once again, and so we went out to pull up our prawn traps.  In our first trap we had 18 keepers, and in our second we had 32. A total of 50 prawns, which was not a bad haul at all. We also threw back three females and a few small ones. We reset both traps, and headed back.
We had gotten a later start in the morning because we had waited for it to warm up a bit before going out. There was a breeze in the morning that had made it seem particularly nippy, and since the wind was forecasted to die off, we waited. Sure enough the wind did die down by mid morning, and we got to go out to our traps in the sunshine. In the early afternoon the clouds started to build up, and the heat from the sun disappeared. Nonetheless it did feel warmer than it had over the past few days.
On our way home, just outside of Pruth Bay, we saw a sea otter. I was driving Kiki, and I had seen it up ahead and had thought that it was just a log. The sun was so low, and it was blinding me with the glare off of the water, so that the sea otter’s silhouette just looked like a floating log. It wasn't until we entered the shade from the hill, and were now quite close to it, that we realized what it was. Surprisingly it did not seem phased by us at all, and even when I slowed down and said, "Hi," it just laid on its back, with its front paws on its chest above the water, looking at us with its cute little whiskered face. We watched it for a while, and then eventually it dove and swam away. Sea Otters are so cute, it was too bad that my camera was packed away in my backpack, as we were close enough that it would have been a great picture.