Cruising Adventures of the Red Witch

June 4th (Thursday) In the morning, after a bit of sewing, we got ready for Ken to pick us up around 11:00.  It was the day for the Mowi staff fishing trip on the lake.  Although it was socked in and raining in the morning, as we started to get ready the clouds began to lift and we were hopeful for a nice day.   Ken picked us up and we went up to the lake with him and Shelly where we met up with the crew.   There were three boats in the lake ready for our use, one was the Mowi lake boat which is used for adjusting the intake pipes on the lake, the second was the Mowi sea boat which had been brought up for the day, and the third was a nice little lake boat of Ken’s.     Jason and I rode with Ken and Shelly, and as we planed out across the water we were happy to be under the cover of their small enclosure as another shower came overhead.     It was lovely to be out on the lake again.     The last time tha...

March 20th (Friday)  At 09:00 Ken came by to pick us up. We headed up to Link Lake to see what we could do about clearing out the boat launch area. It was blocked by logs, and we set about throwing, carrying, and pushing them out of the way. It did not take us long, and we had the ramp all cleared except for one log that was too far out into the water for us to get a good push on. It was floating except for the root end, which was stuck in the mud. We decided that we would have an easier time moving it once we had the boat backed part way into the water so that we could stand in the boat and be closer to the log to give it a good push.   We headed back to Ken’s place in Martin Valley to get the boat, and then back up to the lake we went. It turned out that the boat trailer had an easy time of moving the last log out of the way as Ken backed the boat into the water. Soon we were off, planing across the lake. The wind from planing was quite nippy, but it was a b...

January 16th (Thursday) The arctic outflow winds continued to howl last night. There were some especially strong gusts that pushed our boat hard away from the dock, and when she pulled tight on her dock lines it made the boat rock under the strain. The noise of the creaking, frozen dock lines, and the bumping fenders, kept us awake for part of the night as the wind whistled through our rigging. In the morning, when we checked our dock lines, we noticed how much our breast line, in particular, had worn away at the 4x4 that we are tied to on the dock. Our lines were undamaged, but the wood on the dock was showing the wear.   It snowed quite hard on and off over the past night, and at times we could hear it hitting our boat. It was being driven along so fast by the wind that it sounded more like it was brushing across our deck rather then actually landing on it. In the morning, the most of the snow’s accumulation on our boat was actually inside our enclosure. The wind had ...

January 15th (Wednesday) The wind increased over night and remained strong all day. In the morning, with the mountain behind Ocean Falls glistening in the sun, it was beautiful to watch the walls of dusty snow being blown off of the top of the mountain. Although we had only been getting mostly 25-30 knot winds, it was amazing how much stronger the winds felt because of the denseness of the air from being so cold.  The impact of the wind felt a lot stronger than what 25-30 knots felt like in the summer.    When I spoke with my parents in the afternoon, from the pay phone, they told me that the wind at Cathedral Point, which is out in Burke Channel and usually about the same as the wind in Dean Channel, it was sustained winds of 117 km/hr gusting to 134 km. We were very glad that we were not out there.     The waves, the wind chill, and the freezing spray, would be incredible. There was a hurricane force wind warning in effect for the Central Coast f...

December 16 th  and 17 th   (Monday and Tuesday) On our first night in Ocean Falls, when the precipitation started, we could hear on the roof that it was not rain. We stuck our heads out during the night and saw that the dock was white. Yay, snow. For the rest of the night we hoped that we would wake up to a winter wonderland, but as the early morning came we could tell by the sound that it had changed to rain. There was still a good layer of white slush on the docks and on our boat in the morning, but by then it was pouring rain. It poured all day, and an outflow wind continued to howl. On Tuesday morning the winds died off, and the downpour changed to rain and then to a steady drizzle. After a productive morning of Spanish and thoroughly cleaning the interior of our boat, we headed out to explore Ocean Falls. We took a letter to mail at the post office, and there we met Tigger and Dorothy. Tigger is the post-office cat who was a fantastic greeter, and who loved to ...