Post Office and Logging Camp

January 22th and 23rd (Wednesday and Thursday)

We had showers and rain on and off the past couple of days. With the constant cloud cover and southeast winds blowing on the central coast, the outflow winds have remained mostly calm. Last night the winds began to howl again, and the rain pelted down, but they both had settled down by midnight. Even when there is cloud cover the outflow winds seem to build during the day, and then blow themselves out in the evening.  

We went to the post office yesterday morning to mail a letter to my parents, which contained a memory chip with the blog stories and pictures on it. The floatplane landed later in the morning, so it should be on its way to Port Hardy.  Apparently it goes from Port Hardy to Vancouver, before being sorted in the main sorting facility and then heading back over to Victoria. We talked with Dorothy, the post lady, for a while, and enjoyed petting the post-office cat, Tiger. 

It is definitely a small town here as news travels fast. Dorothy had already heard from others in the community about many of our adventures, and she was happy to hear more. There are only a few residents that we see and have gotten to know, since they all live down in Martin River. Ken, the wharfinger, and Rachel, the snowplough driver, along with Dorothy are our main acquaintances, but even still, word of mouth travels fast in a small community.   

We were lucky yesterday, and caught three good-sized male Dungeness crabs.  We had been catching so many females that it made us wonder where all of the males were. Then again today when we pulled up the trap we had about eight females and only one small male. It sure was nice to have fresh crab last night.  We had a full crab dinner feast and we even had some left over. We plan to make crab fried rice to go with our fish for dinner tonight.  

We went out fishing, and on the way out we set both of our prawn traps. It was the first time that we had tried prawning in Cousins Inlet, so it will be interesting to see what we get.  

Although we dressed warmly, and had some hot tea along with us, we still got cold out on the water. It is hard to stay warm no matter how warm we dress when we are sitting still for hours on end exposed to the elements. We stayed out fishing for about four hours, determined to get something. In the end we caught one pacific cod and then went home, happy that we had fresh fish for dinner. It was not a productive day, and so far Cousins Inlet does not seem like a very productive place when it comes to gathering our own food. It is unfortunate, but all we can do is keep trying.

While we were out on the water, a boat came out to us from a floating two-story building which we had guessed was a logging camp base. We met Kelly, the camp manager for the Bear Lake logging camp. He told us that he was out there getting the camp ready for the crew to come back, and for work to start again. He now had the cook at the base, and the rest of the crew was to be coming in on Tuesday.  
They are logging a part of the closest tip of King Island, which is just across Dean Channel. We had seen the logging activity there when we went up to Eucott Bay in September, and we had wondered where the loggers were staying.  Apparently they shut down on the seventh of December, and they were just getting started again. He told us about how their log boom area and dock structure in Dean Channel had broken free during the strong out flow winds that we had had last week. It sounded like they experienced similar winds to Cathedral Point of around 100-130 kms per hour. It was a good thing that they had had their logging camp floats anchored in a more protected area.  

Kelly was very interested in our travels so far, and very surprised to see us out fishing. He then invited us to come by the camp for a visit and some food.  Apparently they had a lot of food there, and it was just him and the cook. He also told us that we were welcome to use their laundry and shower facilities. It was very nice of him.