A Visit to the Logging Camp

January 24th and 25th (Friday and Saturday)

Our days are rapidly getting longer, and the sun is noticeably getting higher in the sky. Today was the first day that we have had real sunshine on our boat.  The sun is just getting to that point where it is coming up above the high mountains to the east, it is such a change from 13 days ago when we first got back. Obviously winter is not over yet, but with the sun shining, we could feel the warmth in the air, and it felt like spring was not too far away.  

We have been trying to keep track of the sunrise and sunset times whenever we find out the weather, because we find it quite interesting to know how rapidly everything is changing. In four days we gained 10 minutes of daylight, and in the following 2 days we will gain 7 minutes. It’s very exciting!

Today we headed out in Kiki to visit Kelly, the Logging Camp manager. We spent several hours visiting with him, and got a full tour of the floating camp. It was quite interesting to see and hear about how the facility operates. It really is quite the operation. The lodge accommodates 29 people, and their floating base is fully equipped with a water-maker desalination system, three methods of heating water, two diesel generators, large fridges and freezers, a full chef kitchen, and satellite internet and TV. 

Kelly was very generous and let us use the laundry facilities to do a couple of loads of laundry, he also sent us home with food for a feast for us to have for dinner. Due to the weather the arrival of his crew was to be later than originally planned, so he had food that was prepared, and needed to be eaten. Our take home dinner and dessert included chicken breasts with onions, zucchini, and potatoes, along with some “homemade” cheese cake that the chef had made, along with a cherry sauce and real whip cream for dessert. What a treat! Thank you Kelly. We were also invited to come back the next day for dinner and to spend the night, since we would not want to go home in the dark in our tender.  

On our way home we tried a bit of fishing in a few different areas in Cousins Inlet.  We caught two fish, but both were very small. The first one was a small Pacific Cod, and when we let it go it quickly swam back to the bottom. The second was a fish that we had not seen before. From our fish book we think that it was a Saffron Cod, although our fish book says very little about it, which suggests that it is not common to this area. Apparently they live primarily in Alaska. 

As it started to get dark we pulled up our prawn traps. In one we had just three prawns, but they were all large. In the other trap we didn't have any prawns, but we did have one male Dungeness crab that was big enough to keep. We reset our traps, and hoped that we would have better luck next time.