Cruising Adventures of the Red Witch

September 9, 2021  On Tuesday, September 7th, we got off from work and got ready to head out on the boat for my birthday week. On Wednesday morning we headed out and rode the flooding tide up the Dean Channel to one of our favourite anchorages, Eucott Hot Springs.  It was the perfect place to spend a forecasted rainy week for my birthday. It was on September 11th two years ago that we arrived in Eucott Bay for the first time, and we ended up spending the rest of the month of September there enjoying the hot springs, the beauty of the area, exploring the forests, and picking Chanterelle mushrooms. It was amazing to be back.  My birthday was perfect, the morning started with a cup of tea in my pajamas in our cockpit, followed by opening presents.  My parents had mailed up a box of presents for me to open, so I had lots to enjoy opening along with the presents from Jason.  After opening presents Jason made us a delicious breakfast, which was followed by a trip t...

May Through August 2021  The Coho and Chinook salmon runs this year were quite good. It was a nice change from last year’s very poor run. Jason with a Chinook Salmon. We had some great days out fishing, and on one of the days that we did not catch anything we saw a small pod of Orca whales. We were surprised at how few Humpback whales we saw this year, and we also didn’t see any dolphins. It would be interesting to know where they were feeding. It seemed like there were a lot of baitfish around this year, so perhaps the whales found good feeding grounds somewhere else and did not venture up the Fisher and Dean channels very much.  We frequently enjoyed fresh salmon for dinner and we easily caught enough to freeze as much as we wanted. After a particularly good day out fishing we got to busy and canned 37 jars in our pressure canner. Last year the fishing was not good enough to ever fill our jars, so the last time that we canned salmon was on our sailboat in Codville Lag...

August 13, 2021  At the far end of Link Lake, and at the mouth of the Braden River, is a massive sandbar.  We spent some time there one hot sunny day, and when we walked away from the water’s edge and in through the small shrubby trees it was amazing the amount of heat that was radiating off of the sand.  It was a beautiful sandbar and we explored the whole thing, finding deer tracks and baby frogs.  The fishing was good off of the bank out into the river, but the water was a little too cold to make us want to swim, even though the sun was hot. So, we headed to a better swimming spot.  There was a beach across the lake and a bit further up than Triple Falls, and that was where we spent most of our swimming and beach time. It had a steep drop off for swimming, but it also had a large sandy area for relaxing and small enough rocks to walk around barefoot. Sitting on a log at the water’s edge we watched trout swimming along, patrolling the shallows. In the cry...

August 1, 2021  On this day we were out on the lake early in the morning, and we had brought along our shoes specifically so that we could hike up a gorge.  We had spotted this spot on a previous day and decided that it would be neat to hike up between the massive vertical rock faces to see what was around the corner. We tied Kiki off to shore and made our way up.  The rocky path of jumbled rocks that had fallen down over time was surprisingly stable and it had clearly been settling under snow, ice, and water for many years.  Climbing steeply up our rocky staircase we gained elevation quickly and soon the steep walls of the cliffs narrowed in around us.  Until we got higher and higher none of the rocks were loose under foot.  We came to a Y in the gorge. The right-hand path dead-ended a ways ahead as the rocks closed in, but the branch to the left carried on.  We headed up the left-hand branch and passed a massive boulder sitting in the middle of th...

July 30, 2021  One warm summer’s morning, as we were planing along in Kiki across the glassy, calm water of Link Lake, Jason suddenly altered course and said that he had seen a bat hit the water. All I could see were leaves floating on the still surface, but Jason had seen the impact so he new the area to head towards. As we got closer we spotted a bat using its wings to swim through the water, but it was quite far from land. We slowed down and I grabbed our fishing net. As we got close I reached out and scooped the poor little fellow up out of the water.  I laid the net down across Kiki’s seat and the bat walked its way to the edge of the net where it settled down and looked around. We looked at it from both sides.  It was very neat to have such a close encounter with a bat; they are such amazing animals. Its cute little, squished-looking face with its large, pointy ears peered around at us. After a few minutes of sitting out in the sun the bat took a little hop an...

July 29, 2021  Because we had Kiki instead of Little Red on Link Lake we were able to do a lot more exploring up at the far end of the lake and up the Braden River. Little Red draws a lot more water and is less maneuverable than Kiki and we cannot row Little Red well, and as such, are limited as to where we can go in shallow water with her. Kiki, on the other hand, was the perfect boat for exploring the lake. She draws very little water and when it got really shallow we could tilt up the outboard and simply keep rowing along. It was great.  We were able to get right up to the head of the stump patch, and we found the perfect fishing ground. Because the lake was quite warm this year many of the fish hung out at the river’s mouth, and this was especially true where the Braden River came into Link Lake. We had to go over a shallow area to get to where the water was much colder and only about 5-10 feet deep; it was crystal clear. On the calm days that we were up there we coul...

July 29, 2021  Last year we had the “Little Red” boat up on Link Lake and we had Kiki in the ocean for fishing. This year we did the opposite; we kept Little Red in the ocean to use for fishing and we took Kiki up to the lake. It was much easier to get Kiki into the lake, as she is much easier to handle. We took her from the sailboat to the boat launch, lifted off the outboard motor and put it in the truck, and then easily lifted Kiki into the truck. We partially deflated the sides so that she would ride well in the back of the truck, and took her up to the lake. We did not have to worry about clearing logs from in front of the boat launch because we did not have to back a trailer in. We got her re-inflated and the outboard back on, and we were ready to go. View of Triple Falls from the Summer of 2020  This was our first day out on Link Lake this summer, and we headed to check out the area of Triple Falls. We had heard from our friends that there had been a slide and th...