Cruising Adventures of the Red Witch

April 13th (Monday) In the morning I headed back over to the municipal building to add a few more items to our food order.  While I was away, Jason got us all ready to go out fishing, and when I got back we headed out.  It was a beautiful morning, partly cloudy, but the winds were light and it was lovely.  On our way out we had some very unexpected outboard issues.  Through the winter we had some issues with getting our motor started on the cold mornings, and it has not gotten dramatically better as the temperatures have been getting warmer.  We have been doing some minor troubleshooting and we think that it might be a faulty automatic choke.  We have gotten in touch with the Yamaha service centre in Victoria that we purchased the motor from, and we are hoping for some advice.  Unfortunately with the COVID-19 restrictions that are in place it would be impossible for us to take it to a service centre, so hopefully t...

April 12th (Sunday) It was a beautiful and surprisingly warm day.   Yesterday we had finally decided that it was time to remove our V-berth hatch cover.  We had put a layer of insulation and plastic underneath our hatch last fall when the weather started getting colder and wetter because we were getting condensation drips at night.  The insulation and sealed air layer prevented the condensation, but it also covered up our hatch.  By removing the cover we now have our awesome skylight back in our bedroom, and because of this we were up early with the daylight, which was nice.  After our morning Spanish time, we headed out hiking.  We made our way up our cleared trail and when we got to some of the steeper sections, like the one that goes up the narrow ridgeline, we stopped.   We had been given some old rope and we had carried it up with us.  We used the rope to make a secure line, which would hopefully ...

April 11th (Saturday) Today turned into a lovely day of relaxing and exploring.  We headed out in Kiki in the morning even though it was a little breezy.  We had decided that if it was too windy to fish we would enjoy one of the beaches out near Wallace Bay, and we were prepared with a picnic lunch.  It was around low-tide slack when we got out there and after checking out the shoreline on the west side of the inlet we tried a bit of fishing.  It was too windy out in the middle of the channel, but we tucked ourselves behind one of the points and tried drifting around there.  Although we were not too far away from shore it was still quite deep, around 100 feet, so we thought it was worth a try.  We caught a small and very pretty Greenstriped Rockfish, a small Pacific Sanddab, which is a Left-eye Flounder, unlike a Halibut, which is a right eye.  This means that both of its eyes have shifted to be on the left side ...

April 10th (Friday) Last night the Shearwater barge arrived at our dock to tie up for the night.  In the morning at around 07:00 they fired up their engines and headed over to the unloading area.  Because we were getting some propane from them, I headed up the dock and Gladys picked me up on her way by.  While our propane tank was being filled we loaded up her truck with all of the Save-On-Foods grocery items, and most excitingly for us, two boxes from Shearwater.  Our mail at last!!   We had ended up coming to an agreement regarding our mail and we paid $45 for the two boxes of items.  It worked out to be the cheapest option that we had under the circumstances, and it really was our only option if we wanted our items.  Now Jason has some rubber boots that don’t have holes in them, and we have our water-maker filters, as well as many other items that we had been wanting and waiting for.   While...

April 8th (Wednesday) Today, since the conditions looked good and the weather was nice we decided to head out fishing again.  We ended up catching three Pacific Cod, two were on the smaller side, but one was a pretty good size and they gave us meat for a few delicious meals. On our way back home we checked our prawn trap and we had three large prawns.  Jason and I shared them, 1.5 each, as an appetizer to dinner.  Mmmmm, they were so sweet and delicious, hopefully we will get a bigger haul sometime soon.  It has been a long time since we have had a good number of prawns.   When we got home I made a batch of cookies to have with our milk that needed to get used up, and Jason made a delicious soup.  Since we needed to use the cream, and we also had a giant head of cauliflower from Kelly, he made a cream of cauliflower soup, and since we also had a bunch of crabmeat that was getting old in our freezer he added that as w...

April 7, 2020, Tuesday Today we headed out fishing again.  Since we did not catch anything yesterday and nothing on Saturday we figured we should give it another try, and it turned out to be probably one of our most productive fishing trips ever.   Yesterday had been quite drizzly, damp, and cold, and although today was still cold, the sun was out for the most part and we were much happier and warmer drifting in the sunshine.   Mt. Caro Marion (the mountain that we are making the trail to) The breeze was blowing up from the south and the tide was ebbing, but it was near slack current.  We were being blown gently along on a near perfect drift when I caught a nice-sized fish.  It fought some on the way up, and when it came to the surface it was a nice little halibut, 28.5” long.  Yay!   This was the second halibut that I have caught on the jig, and we were both surprised that it came for my jig instead of...

April 6th (Monday) Although the sky was clouding up in the morning the forecast was for decent weather, and the water was perfectly calm.  We decided that we should go out fishing. Before heading out I tried and tried to get in touch with the Shearwater grocery store and post office about getting our mail put on the Shearwater barge.  I had been in touch with the barge coordinator and we had agreed upon $45 to get a couple of boxes sent on the barge.  It was a lot cheaper than the previous quote of $90, and a lot cheaper than having Canada post forward all of our mail to us, and at this point it was really our only option.  I could not get a hold of anyone in the morning so we headed out fishing.  We spent several hours out fishing today, and although the wind and tide were actually cooperating to give us a good drift line, we caught nothing worth keeping.  We did, however, catch two fish that we had never caught before....

April 5th (Sunday) Today we were eager to head out trail building again.  It was a beautiful sunny morning and although still crisp, it felt a lot more like spring than the last few days.  We headed up along our well-groomed path until it came to the end in the middle of the forest.  Here we started building the trail once again, this time working upwards along a general line towards where we knew the old trail had been.   Jason was armed once again with his club, and we made a musical racket through the forest as we worked our way forwards.  When we came to the area where the old trail was marked, it was at a crossing of an old washout, and at this point when we crossed the riverbed we entered a whole different forest.  We went from small trees covered in sticks and twigs from top to bottom, closely spaced, allowing little light down to the forest floor, with old large stumps scattered here and there, into an untouched f...

April 4th (Saturday) Today we decided to go out fishing.  The sky was mostly cloudy, but it looked like it wanted to get sunnier and the forecast had been for a mix of sun and cloud.  We bundled up well; I even wore my long johns, because it was not warm out. On our way out we set our crab trap with just a couple little pieces of bait with the plan that we would get some fish and then put the carcasses in at the end of the day.  We then set our prawn trap with the rest of our bag of bait and headed to the area of Wallace Bay. Unfortunately, although it had seemed quite calm at the dock, there was enough of a north wind blowing on an angle along Cousins Inlet that when we tried to do our drift lines out in front of Wallace Bay we found ourselves always blowing in towards shore.  We seemed unable to drift on the course that we wanted, but we persisted.   Since we were out there, we stayed out there fishing, trying different area...

April 3rd (Friday)  This morning the sky was filled with broken clouds and the sun was just peaking through a crack.  There was one cloud that hung around Baldy Mountain that looked a lot darker than the rest, and it was not long before our inlet between the mountains was socked in, and it began to snow.  It was a beautiful snow, not wet and heavy, the flakes were light and fluffy looking, and they settled slow enough that one could watch a snowflake fall and settle on the dock, where it remained; it did not melt.  When the cloud passed us by, the sun broke out again, and the little skiff of snow quickly melted, but it was not warm. When we headed out later in the morning we looked up and watched as a snow tornado sat up on the top of the mountain directly above us.  We kept expecting the tornado to reach the edge and all of the snow to blow outwards, but it did not seem to move.  It appeared to remain in one spot, just back fr...

April 2nd (Thursday)  In the early afternoon we headed out for a hike.  We had decided that since it seemed that we were going to be around Ocean Falls for more time than we had originally planned, we would like to climb some of the mountains.  Mt. Caro Marion is the one that towers up over 4,000 feet, directly over Martin Valley; it is bare rock on top, and from pictures that we have seen, it provides a spectacular view.  When we came into Cousins Inlet for the first time in our sailboat back in December, we remarked that if we were here in the summer we would climb that mountain. Well here we are, it’s not quite summer and there is still too much snow on the top to hike up all the way, but it’s a perfect time to start the trail.  We decided that rather than just hiking up and back, we would like to clear and mark a trail for others to enjoy.   Mt. Caro Marion has been climbed many times over the years.  When ...

April 1st  (Wednesday) After a couple of hours of calm winds yesterday evening, it picked back up again and howled through the night.  At around 10:00 this morning Ken came down to see us.  He wanted to let us know that the dock master had made the call to close the dock, and that although we could leave overnight to get supplies, we could not take our time and go adventuring.   Disappointed, we headed over to the municipal building to try to get in touch with the manager of the Shearwater barge to see if we could arrange for our mail to be picked up by the barge and brought to us in Ocean Falls.  If we could not go out and anchor we were not very enthusiastic about making the four-hour trip one way just to get our mail, and then come back.   Through the day things seemed like they were with us, and things somewhat sorted themselves out.  Word got around, and people got talking, and we were not the only peopl...

March 31st (Tuesday)  After hearing the wind all night we awoke to strong outflow winds.  We had been planning to leave the dock at around 07:00, but instead we walked over to the municipal building to check the weather on the internet.   There were outflow winds at Cathedral Point in Burke Channel of around 90 km/hr, and the forecast was for such to continue for at least the day and probably into tomorrow.  The wind speed, combined with a wind chill of -10 at Cathedral Point was not motivating.  Also, knowing how nasty channel conditions can get with a steady wind we decided to stay at the dock.  If we had not had to go out into Dean Channel we probably would have left anyway, but we were not too keen on going out into a nasty chop in such cold conditions with the probability of freezing spray.   As we were heating water for our morning tea and coffee our propane tank ran out.  I went outside onto our b...