Cruising Adventures of the Red Witch

August 28th (Friday) It was cloudy in the morning, but it looked promising that it would remain dry all day.  We ended up having a few showers, but for the most part it was nice.  We headed out to gather some more firewood.  We went back to the same area that we had gotten wood from the other day and got to work on the second windfall yellow-cedar tree that we had found.     This second tree was up from the road and hanging out over a rocky cave-in bank area.     Jason went up to the tree with the saw and worked his way along, limbing it, and cutting it into rounds.     At first the tree was perfectly situated so that as he cut the rounds off they would fall and roll down the rocky cliff into the lower area.  And, as he worked his way back along the tree the rounds would fall onto the ground and then with a helping hand he would start them rolling and down they would come.  In between his cuts I worked at fetchin...

August 26th and 27th (Wednesday and Thursday)     Wednesday was barge day and so we decided to have a stay at home day.  Since we need to be home when the barge comes in, and we never have much notice as to the time it will arrive, it made sense to combine the two.  We had a nice day. On Thursday we were up early once again and planing our way out to our fishing grounds.   After a day off from fishing our optimism was renewed and we were hopeful that the fish would be there and be hungry.     We saw dolphins heading up the Dean Channel, and we stopped as we were crossing the channel to let them pass.  As we stopped and floated they altered their course and came over to us, surfacing all around us.  They had young ones with them that were swimming close beside their moms, and it was so neat to see them surfacing together.  All of the dolphins, but especially the young ones, seemed quite full of energy and man...

August 25th (Tuesday)   It was cloudy in the morning, but it looked like it might remain dry.  We grabbed our chainsaw stuff and headed out in our truck.  We drove out through the town of Martin Valley and out along the logging roads that go into the back area by Twin Lakes.  We had only been out there once before, and that was back in the spring when there was still snow on the ground when we helped Ken, the Wharfinger, get wood for his place.  This time we were on the hunt for wood for our place.  My how things have changed for us here.   When we had gone out with Ken we had been stopped by the snow just before the end of the first lake, so when we got out past that point it was new exploring for us.  Although part of us wanted to just go exploring, we also had a perfect day for gathering wood, so when we found a good tree we stopped and got to work.   The first tree that we found was a beautiful, old...

August 24th (Monday)   We were up early in the morning, and we headed out fishing.  It was a cool, cloudy day and it felt like an October morning.  Bundled up in our cool-weather layers we trolled our way along the rocky shoreline between Rattenbury Point and an area that locals call The Rock Pile, across from Sunny Island.  It was a beautiful, calm day and we were seeing lots of humpback whales.  Some were off in the distance and all we saw were their blows, but others were close by and a couple were fishing the same shoreline as us.  Because we can be rather stubborn, which is the same trait that got us up Baldy Mountain, we stayed out trolling for eight hours even though we only caught one fish.  We did get two other bites and we saw a couple of fish jump, but that was the extent of our action.  After 15:00 we headed home, happy that we had at least caught one fish.   As we neared the entrance to Cou...

August 23rd (Sunday) At 07:00 we walked over to the yacht club dock and met Dave on his boat, and headed out.  We planed our way out to the area of Barba Point where we tried some salmon fishing for a couple of hours, but we didn’t have any action.  At around 09:30 we headed up Dean Channel, spotting humpback whales along both shores.  We turned left and checked out the small inlet of Elcho Harbour.  There was a beautiful grassy area at the end where the river came out, and a sailboat was anchored close to the shore.  The harbour, like all of the inlets and channels in this area, is very deep; often it will be 100 feet or more until one can almost touch the shore.  This can make anchoring a challenge, but the sailboat had found a shallow enough area just out from the shoreline.   We left the sailboat to the peace of their surroundings and headed back out, continuing up the Dean Channel.  We turned left once ...

August 21st and 22nd (Friday and Saturday)   On Friday we spent much of the day cleaning the boat.  It is amazing that last year when we were on the Central Coast we did not have any mould grow on the inside of our enclosure until October, and when we lived aboard our boat for several years in Vancouver we never had our enclosure get mouldy, but this year with the cool temperatures and almost constant rain the mould keeps growing quickly.  We regularly clean it away so as to prevent if from damaging the material.  In addition, the condensation inside our boat has become more of a constant annoyance.  Living aboard a boat full time on the Central Coast of British Columbia is definitely not as nice as living aboard further south, and being stuck on the Central Coast for this long was definitely not in our plans.  On Saturday we went over to a house in town to start cleaning.  We have decided to live in a house here for the winter...

August 19th and 20th (Wednesday and Thursday) Ah, it was lovely to sleep in and rest.  After another 15 days of working it sure was nice to have some time off.  It was mail day on Wednesday, and since we were expecting some items, we walked over and visited with Tiger and Dorothy in the afternoon.  We received the items that we were hoping for, one of which was our new carburetor and prime start assembly for our outboard.  Ever since we had started to troubleshoot our outboard’s running problems, we troubleshooted our way through the service manual and the majority of the symptoms pointed to a problem with either the carburetor or the prime start, which is essentially Yamaha’s version of an automatic choke.   As I believe I had mentioned in the past, we had ordered a small ultrasonic cleaner, since that was what we had heard was the most effective way to thoroughly clean a carburetor.  After receiving the ultrasonic cleaner we ...