Cruising Adventures of the Red Witch

February 15 th  and 16th (Saturday and Sunday)   Spanish practice and boat projects, have been the order of the day. In one month’s time our plan is that we will be back out at anchor and adventuring.  Depending on the weather we may leave Ocean Falls closer to the beginning of March, so it really isn’t very long at all until we will be leaving.  We have been doing a bunch of reading about the many anchorages up the coast, and we have picked out a tentative route that we will take on our way north. We are hoping to be somewhere very neat for the herring run, and we are looking forward to seeing the wave of life that apparently arrives on the coast in conjunction with it.  We have made a list of things that we want to get done on the boat before leaving. Some of the projects are simply easier to do here, because of either having shore power or having the use of the dock beside us, but other projects are items that we actually want to have compl...

February 14th (Friday) I know you won’t be reading this until much later, but Happy Valentine’s Day Everyone!! While we were doing our Spanish lessons in the morning, Dorothy came by. When we had been talking to her last week she had mentioned that they were going to try to get a large pile of old, metal piping moved. We had offered our help, and she was coming by to say that they were going to work on moving it then, and that our help would be appreciated.  They had been having a lot of work done on the municipal building, and the piping was what had been torn out from the old plumbing.  As we arrived, Dorothy was giving John directions as he backed up his trailer, and then we all started to untangle the pile of pipes. The pipes were piled in a somewhat, modern-art like pile, similar to a towering game of giant's pickup sticks. To add a level of complexity to the game, most of the pieces were not straight, but had a “Y” or a “T” branch in them, and some even t...

February 12th and 13th (Wednesday and Thursday)  We finished our work on Kiki in “The Shack” on Wednesday. We used what patch material we had left to lay a few more patches over areas of the bottom that showed a concentrated number of scratches. Overall I think the process of applying protective armour patches to Kiki went quite well. It was just too bad that we could not apply a second layer over all of the surfaces. Unfortunately, over the last few days we have noticed that Kiki’s forward air compartment was losing a slight amount of air. When I cleaned her on Monday I tried to pay close attention for any possible sign of bubbles in the soapy water as I scrubbed, but I saw none. We have no idea where the possible leak could be or how it got there, so at this point it is just a troubling thought.   Our crabbing has been going much better of late. It would be interesting to know why, but suddenly large males seem to be more consistently in the area. We caught one...

February 11th (Tuesday) In the morning we went to the post office to mail the next blog stories to my parents. We also spent some time attempting to order food from Shearwater with the idea that it would be here on the barge this week. Unfortunately that did not work out, as there was a lot of ambiguity on the part of Shearwater as to whether or not the frozen meat items that we were trying to order would be able to remain frozen on the barge. They also had no sense as to when the barge would arrive. In the end we did not order anything from them, and so at least we saved money.   While at the post office we met another lovely resident of the area named Eva.  We enjoyed playing with her two dogs outside, and she said that she had a lot of produce right now that needed to be eaten. She generously offered it to us, along with some other items from her freezer that were getting old. It has been amazing how kind everyone here has been to us. Back at home we...

February 9th and 10th (Sunday and Monday)  A beautiful sunny morning at the marina. Over these two days we were mainly at home working on projects. Because we were at home, we had put out our round crab trap off of the dock, and used the heads from the fish that we had caught the other day as bait. We hung out one head at a time, from the top, in the middle of the trap, so that the crabs were attracted into the trap, but also so that it was not so simple for them to eat the bait. This way the bait lasted longer, and we could set the trap and check it more frequently.  Because the crabs were able to get out of the round trap, we tried to check the trap every hour or so.  Over the two days, the variety in our catches was amazing. Sometimes we had up to 15 crabs in the trap with all of them being female, other times there were no crabs in the trap, and sometimes we got lucky. In the two days we managed to catch five, good-sized male Dungeness, one of which was a...

February 8th (Saturday) This morning dawned a crisp and beautiful day. The sun was burning off the low clouds that hung around the mountains, and the sky was blue.  We headed out early for another try at fishing. The day was a perfect, early-spring feeling day, and after about 10:00 we were floating in the sunshine. Although the sun was still not strong enough to make black material feel warm, it was strong enough for us to feel some slight warmth on our backs. The view of the snow-covered mountains was beautiful.  Because there was barely a puff of wind, we were both able to fish, and once again we tried both jigging and fishing with bait. As we were gently drifting along, trying many new areas, Jason saw something moving on the shore across the channel. Two animals came out of the forest and onto a sunny rock; they looked like wolves. However, from the distance that we were at it was hard to tell for sure, and since they were both tan coloured we wondered if ...

February 7th (Friday)  This morning we headed out fishing again. They say that “perseverance pays off,” but at this point I am not convinced. The snowline had come way down the mountains overnight, and it was a cold, drizzly rain in the morning, but the winds were calm, so we headed out first thing. Because of our drift rate, we were not able to both be fishing, as one of us had to row, so we took turns fishing with the baited hook. After a couple of hours the wind started to pick up, so we packed up our fishing gear and headed back home. We had only felt one nibble, and something had managed to get the head off of the bait, but otherwise, all had remained on our hook. On our way back home we pulled up our prawn trap, and it was empty except for one little crab. So, we packed it up and brought it home.   It sure was nice to get inside into the warmth, and we settled down with some hot tea to do our Spanish and then to have some lunch.   At 15:00 we me...

February 5th and 6th (Wednesday and Thursday) Wednesday was a highly unmotivating day outside, so we remained indoors as much as possible. The mountains were socked in, it poured rain, and it was cold.  We did as much Spanish lesson time as our brains could handle, and then busied ourselves with reading, writing, and inside projects, and I made a chocolate cake to take over to Ken’s house as dessert for dinner.     At 16:30 Ken picked us up, and we went to his place for dinner. He had made meatballs and gravy with potatoes and carrots for dinner; it was delicious. We had a lovely visit with lots of stories and two games of crib. It was a nice evening.   On Thursday it was still pouring rain, although it did lessen up as the day progressed. After our Spanish time and workout time, Jason went to try some fishing off of the dock. We had heard that in years past, of course not at this time of the year, people had had luck fishing off of the dock, so he thou...

February 4th (Tuesday) We got another couple of inches of snow last night, but unfortunately it had turned to rain by morning. When Jason went out to shovel the dock he made two dock snowmen for us, and I added a third one to the party later.  It was our first snowmen of the year because it was the first time that we had had enough packy snow. When we had our largest quantity of snow, back in January when we were first back from Victoria, it remained so cold that the snow was just powder and we could not make any snowmen. So, at least we finally got to make some, and throw some snowballs, even though the snow was very wet and still not ideal.  While Jason was outside, one of the residents from here, who is in charge of shovelling the docks, came down. He is an older man, and was happy to have Jason shovelling the heavy snow for him. Another resident also came down, and Jason got quite a few stories from the two of them. One of them had been in Ocean Falls fo...

February 3rd (Monday) The sky cleared last night, and we could see the moon and some stars through a thin layer of cloud. In the morning our cleared area of dock, where Jason had shovelled the snow yesterday, was covered in a thick layer of frosty ice. The remaining snow on the dock, which had been wet yesterday, was frozen solid.  Many seals were hauled out on the log breakwater in front of the marina. The logs were snow-covered, and the seals seemed to be holding their heads and tails up higher, leaving less of their bodies touching the cold logs. The seals, with their winter coats, look like they are velvet when they are dry. In particular, there are a few of them that are pitch black, and when the top half of them dries, as they lay on the log, their hair fluffs up and looks just like soft velvet.  Although we were discouraged from our lack of luck fishing yesterday, we bundled up again today and headed out. The conditions were good, with light winds, so we thought...

February 2nd (Sunday) After our Spanish lesson in the morning, we decided to go out fishing. It was hard to tell how much wind might be coming up the inlet, as we were in the calm around the corner in Ocean Falls. At least we figured it would be calm enough to pull up our prawn traps, if not to fish.  It was a crisp and beautiful morning, we had gotten about two inches of snow overnight, and the mountains were white and glistening.  Looking back toward Martin River. Out from Wallace Bay, in Cousins Inlet, it was still quite choppy, but the wind was light. We were able to fish with one person fishing and the other person keeping the bow into the waves. As the day progressed the wind calmed off even more, and the chop gradually dissipated.  It turned out to be a perfect weather day for fishing. The sun came out on and off, the wind was calm, and the sea almost turned glassy. Ocean Falls Unfortunately it was not a perfect day for fishing in terms of t...

February 1st (Saturday) After I finished writing last night, we stayed up cringing at the sounds of the gusts, and feeling sorry for our boat having to ride it out. We were getting no protection from the wind, and very little from the waves. It is very nice to be tied up to a dock with shore power, however, one advantage to being at anchor is that we can pick and choose our anchorages to try to give ourselves the best protection from different wind directions. The Ocean Falls marina is not protected at all from the southwest.  At around 21:30 last night, after a particularly strong gust, we went out into our cockpit to look around. We saw a massive-looking boat coming up the inlet; they had their spotlight on in front of them, which illuminated the large, whitecap waves and flying spray. It looked very dramatic in the otherwise pitch-black night. As it came past the marina we realized that it was the Nimpkish ferry.  They were flying in towards the dock with the st...

January 31st (Friday)  Today was a fairly similar repeat of yesterday, without the excitement of a boat breaking free from the dock. We enjoyed our tea while practicing Spanish, and then, since the rain had stopped, I went out onto the dock to skip. As I was skipping, I was watching the seals on the breakwater, which were also watching me. Some of them slipped into the water, but many remained balanced on the logs. Occasionally one would snort at me, as though trying to tell me what a disturbance to their morning I was. The ones in the water would pop up to the surface and watch me, and then, as though startled by something, they would dive under with a splash. The seals that remained on the logs watched me intently, ready to slip into the water if I became more of a threat. It is interesting, Jason noticed while he was skipping, that as long as he continued to face the seals, the majority of them remained on the log, but as soon as he turned his back to them, and skipped faci...

January 30th (Thursday)  Our day started like many others; I did some writing, while Jason did some reading. We did a couple of hours of Spanish lesson time, which is what we try to do every day. We both exercised, and we heated our water tank and back bathroom while having lunch. After lunch we both enjoyed showers, and then started tinkering on some boat projects. That is when the wind started, and that is when the day became abnormal. Our afternoon got exciting when the sustained wind speed rose above 30 knots, and the gusts of 40-50 knots became longer and more frequent. It got to the point where our wind alarm, set at 30 knots, was always on, and every time we looked at the meter it was in the high 40s. The wind was coming from the southwest, straight up the channel and directly at us.    The marina’s breakwater, which is a line of floating logs, was being continually covered in water as the waves coming up the channel broke over it, and as the tide got hig...

January 29th (Wednesday)  We had quite the unexpected stormy weather all day. We were awakened around 06:30 to the sound of the wind starting to howl. The gusts were clearly building in strength, and the rain was pelting down. We could tell by the feel of the boat that the wind was coming from a different direction, so we got up to look around.  We went out into the cockpit and buttoned everything up as the rain was driving past our enclosure. The wind was coming up the valley from the southwest instead of out the valley from the northeast. It was the first time here that we had had strong winds from a direction other than the northeasterly outflows.   Back in bed we listened to the length and intensity of the gusts continuing to build. Jason got up again to watch our wind-speed monitor, and right away he was seeing sustained gusts of 47 knots (87 km). He came back to bed, and we listened to the driving rain and the shuddering gusts that were pushing our ...