Cruising Adventures of the Red Witch

June 7, 2022  One of my favourite parts about crabbing, prawning, and fishing, apart from the obvious joy of catching a fish and the delicious food that we can catch and gather, is the unknown of what we might pull up.  In particular, each time we pull up our prawn traps, because they are left for several days at a deeper depth, it is always interesting to see what comes up in the trap.  This year we have found that we are catching a lot more squat lobsters than in other years, which is an interesting change.    On one particular day, however, we pulled up our traps and we had an octopus inside.  Our bait container had been carefully unscrewed, all of our bait had been eaten, and we had very few prawns, but getting to see the octopus was totally worth it.  They are such cool animals.   This was only the second time that we had caught an octopus in our prawn trap, and the last time was back when we were out at anchor in 2019.  The holes...

July 2, 2022 Our next taste of summer came right around Canada Day, and once again we took one day off from our projects to truly enjoy the day.   This time we headed out onto Link Lake.   It was the first time that we had been up on the lake this year.   We went out with our friends, Ken and Shelly, and also a bunch of other friends.   We loaded up Ken’s landing skiff with kayaks and people, and then we also took Ken’s lake boat with the rest of the people.   Jason was appointed Captain of Ken’s lake boat and since our three other passengers had never been out on the lake before, we took them from spectacular viewpoints to stunning waterfalls and told them what history we knew of the lake.   It was a stunning day with not a cloud in the sky.   The waterfalls were rushing from snowmelt and previous rainfall, and the day was warm and gorgeous.   We took the boats and the kayaks right up to the large sandbar at the end of the l...

May 21, 2022 This year our spring in Ocean Falls, like that of much of BC, was long and cold.   On the 17th of May we awoke to four degrees and rain, with the snowline distinctly showing well down the mountains.   This was nothing unusual for us, but we were in for a few truly spring and almost summer-like days.   With sunshine and warm temperatures forecasted for the weekend, we were excited.   It was early enough in the spring that the bugs had not come out yet and so we would be able to relax and enjoy the warmth.   On May 21st, on what was forecasted to be the nicest of the nice-weather days, Jason and I packed up our bags and headed out in Little Red for a day of enjoying the sun.   We started the day with a bit of fishing, but quickly decided to head in to a beautiful beach that is on a little island near Rattenbury Point.   The weather was gorgeous and it felt like summer.   We spent the day exploring the shoreline and lying in the sunshi...

May 20, 2022 One of the many projects that we had on our list to do to our sailboat this year, in preparation for hopefully heading to Mexico in the fall, was to go up our mast and install a new wind vane.   This new Raymarine I60 wind vane transducer and accompanying display would communicate with our Raymarine autopilot so that instead of steering to a chosen heading our autopilot could steer to a chosen wind angle.   With appropriate alarms set in case the wind changed directions, and of course with someone on watch, our autopilot could then easily steer our boat under sail.   The wind vane system that was already installed at the top of our mast told us the wind speed, but it would not communicate the wind angle to our autopilot.   So, on one sunny, crisp, but calm day in May we made this our project.   Because I am lighter and Jason is stronger he winched me up to the top of the mast such that with one of us at the top, and the other at the bottom, our work...