The First Few Days of December 2019

December 2nd-5th (Monday – Thursday)

I had not written for the past few days because there had not been much to write about, but thinking about the four days together revealed that there had been some things worth telling.
We have enjoyed having access to the beaches on Calvert Island, and one sunny afternoon while we were sitting on a log in the sun at the end of West Beach we saw four people come out onto the beach at the halfway point where the main access trail is. Apart from us, the only other two people here are the caretakers of the Hakai Institute, and we could tell that it was not them because they did not have their dogs. Of course Jason and I started speculating -- perhaps they were other cruisers spending the winter on the coast, although this was unlikely as we had not seen any others so far, and most people aren't crazy enough to do something like that. Perhaps they were new researchers staying at Hakai, but we knew that the last group had just left a few days ago and that there were no other groups planned to arrive until next year. 
Of course, all of our guesses were wrong. One of the guys started jogging from end to end on the beach, and so on our way home we stopped to talk to him. He was the first mate on a coast guard search and rescue vessel that patrols the Central Coast. He said that they do month-on month-off crew shifts, and that he had suggested to the captain that they come here so that the crew could get some shore leave time to enjoy the beaches and stretch their legs. The next day we saw their vessel anchored in Keith Anchorage, and they were out in their rigid-hull inflatable presumably doing practice drills.
The other day it was raining and about 4 degrees when we went to bed. In the morning, before getting up, we started hearing a weird noise. It sounded like something scratching at our boat. We got up and looked out to find that Pruth Bay was frozen, and the sound was the ice rubbing against our hull. As the tide was changing, the ice, which was thin, was beginning to break up into individual sheets and to shift around amongst each other, and against our boat. Presumably the bay froze because of all of the rain that we had had the day before. There would have been enough fresh water sitting on top of the salt water to allow it to freeze. We had had ice around our boat while at the marina in North Vancouver, but I did not expect to have it out at anchor, especially in a place like Pruth Bay at Calvert Island.
After our grouse dinner on Saturday night we had some leftovers. Jason made us a delicious, grouse fried rice, and we had it with fresh fried prawns. And, on Tuesday, after being out to check our prawn traps again (we tend to check them every two to three days depending on the weather) we had a crab and prawn pasta, with fresh baked bread.
On Thursday morning we headed out in Kiki to check our prawn traps, but when we got to the area where both traps should have been, there was only one. Since first setting our traps when we first arrived at Pruth Bay, we had kept them in basically the same area. We knew the depths in the area, and we knew that the bottom was quite flat with a consistent depth and no steep drop offs. We also knew that there were no serious currents. Our traps had lots of extra line, and lots of weight in them, and in this area we had never had an issue; but one of our buoys was gone. We did a bit of a zig-zag grid and did not give up on it as we knew how hard a bright orange buoy can sometimes be to see in the poor lighting of a cloudy day, and in the chop of the water. Each time that we set our traps, we mark a pin on the chart program on my phone for the location of our traps, so we knew for sure that we were in the right area, and, that it was not there. Finally we saw it, it had moved close to a half of a nautical mile, and the buoy was sitting very low in the water, indicating that the trap was floating. At least we found it, but how it got moved is a mystery. Surprisingly we also had a few prawns in the trap, but not as many as usual.
In our other trap, which had remained where it should have been, we also did not have as many prawns as at other times. We did, however, have a spiny starfish and when we got the trap up to the boat we caught it in the act of sucking the flesh out of a prawn. There were also three empty prawn shells in the trap indicating that the starfish had been eating well. We knew from the past that these starfish will occasionally catch and eat prawns, but we usually haven't found evidence of such a feast. In total, between both traps, we got 27 prawns.