Cruising Adventures of the Red Witch

January 15th (Wednesday) The wind increased over night and remained strong all day. In the morning, with the mountain behind Ocean Falls glistening in the sun, it was beautiful to watch the walls of dusty snow being blown off of the top of the mountain. Although we had only been getting mostly 25-30 knot winds, it was amazing how much stronger the winds felt because of the denseness of the air from being so cold.  The impact of the wind felt a lot stronger than what 25-30 knots felt like in the summer.    When I spoke with my parents in the afternoon, from the pay phone, they told me that the wind at Cathedral Point, which is out in Burke Channel and usually about the same as the wind in Dean Channel, it was sustained winds of 117 km/hr gusting to 134 km. We were very glad that we were not out there.     The waves, the wind chill, and the freezing spray, would be incredible. There was a hurricane force wind warning in effect for the Central Coast f...

January 14th (Tuesday) Last night at about 02:00 our annoying marten visitor came back. It was the first time that it had been around since we had been back home, and we had been hoping that since we were now home and it would be able to smell us, that it would choose to stay away. We were awoken by the sound of its little feet on our deck as it was walking over top of the v-berth area.  Jason hopped up, and just as he got out into the galley, he heard the marten enter our cockpit. Jason could tell exactly where it was because the marten had bumped a can that was sitting just inside our cockpit enclosure door. Jason quickly opened up the hatch and stuck his head up into the cockpit and came face-to-face with the marten. Jason yelled at the marten, which was taken quite by surprise and turned tail and ran off of our boat and up the dock. Once again we hoped that it would now know that we were back at home, and that it would leave us alone.     Just before noon we bu...

January 13th (Monday) After a long and full nights sleep, we awoke in the morning feeling well rested.  We were also pleasantly surprised by how warm it was inside. It was a comfortable 16 degrees inside, and once we were up we moved our heater from the v-berth into the main cabin area and it warmed up to 18 degrees, quite reasonable considering it was -6 out in our cockpit and even colder outside. Our main cabin hatch, with its metal frame that always condenses and drips water, was white with a layer of frost, a layer that slowly thickened all day. Our bathroom porthole window had ice designs on the inside. It was a beautiful morning.    When we settled down with our tea and coffee for some morning Spanish practice we were disappointed to find that our program was not working. Somehow, while our computer was hooked to the internet at my parents, our lessons became deactivated and required re-activation. Normally this would be easily done with internet access...

Note: Written January 20, 2020 Because there is neither wifi nor cell service here in Ocean Falls we have decided to make use of Canada Post to get these blog stories out to all of you. I am going to take a letter to the post office tomorrow (January 21 st ), addressed to my Mom and Dad in Victoria. Mail is supposed to go out on the 22 nd , but it is weather permitting for the floatplane to land. The letter will contain an SD memory card with a word document containing these blog stories, and also picture files to go along with them. Jason and I have a windows computer and my parents have an apple, so hopefully all works okay to get these files onto their computer. I know the picture files should work fine, but I am unsure about the word document. As a precautionary measure, in case my mom is unable to open the word file, I will take pictures of the text and include them as well. This would be the worst case scenario as it would mean that my mom would have to transcribe all of t...

January 10th (Friday) Happy New Year Everyone!  It is hard to believe that it is 2020 already. Jason and I have had a great vacation on land.  We have enjoyed good visits with family and friends, and have also been enjoying the luxuries of living ashore.  We have enjoyed an unnecessary number of hot showers, especially at my parents where we can enjoy endless hot water in a shower stall that is very big compared to what we are used to aboard the Red Witch.  Everyone we have visited has had a dishwasher, and when we have done dishes by hand, it has been a treat having running hot water.  The wide-open indoor heated areas that most people take for granted have been spoiling us with so much room to roam around indoors.  We are starting our trip back home on Saturday (11 th ), assuming the weather allows it.  In this last week, both of the two ferries that we need to take, and that need to connect with each other in order for us to get back to Oc...