Cruising Adventures of the Red Witch

October 17, 2021 It was October 16 th  when we finally saw our weather window to hike up Goat Mountain.  We spent the afternoon packing and getting ready, and by the evening we were all set.  Jiji enjoyed our sorting and packing as we had stuff spread out over the floor for her to pounce over, hide behind, and get under, however it also seemed like she knew that we were getting ready to go away.   When we get ready to go out for the day, or even just to drive into town, she can tell and she looks at us like, why are you leaving me, do you have to go?   At full light on the morning of October 17 th  we headed up into the forest behind our house and began our climb up Goat Mountain.  We had been up Goat Mountain once before back in February, but that was just a day trip, and this time we were packed to spend two nights up on top.  In February we also had snow for the top 1,000 feet of the ascent, and now that we have seen the ground that wo...

October 6, 2021   Our work shift at the end of September was an eventful one.  We had the vaccination crew in on site so we were working hard to get them a steady supply of fish.  We had a new employee on shift with us, the fourth member of our crew, so I was doing a lot of extra work teaching and instructing, and we were riddled with bad weather.  On one particularly bad weather night we listened to the wind howl past the hatchery, the building shook, and the noise kept us awake.  The BC Ferries' Northern Sea Wolf was at dock in Ocean Falls that night. The reported gusts were over 120km and their bowline broke free from the dock.  Four times that night the hatchery alarm went off, and Jason and I had to get up to deal with it.  Each time it was due to a power fluctuation, called a Brown Out, that tripped some of our sensitive electronic equipment like the frequency drives of our salt-water pumps.  Each time that the alar...