Cruising Adventures of the Red Witch

September 12th – 14th (Saturday – Monday) Lots more time was spent working on our woodpile.  On the weekend we finally got all of the rounds that we had stored in the shed, split and stacked.  Monday morning was a major time for us, as it was moving day.     We spent a few hours packing up some things from the boat, and then headed to move into the house.     We did not want to move too much into the house before we had done more cleaning and some painting, but we needed to have everything there that we would want in the near future.   Then in the afternoon we went out to gather more rounds of wood.  We wanted to get as many rounds as we could, and we managed to get two full truckloads brought back to the house.   The tree that we were working on was hard to access for getting the pieces out.  The tree was a yellow cedar windfall that had ripped the roots right out of the ground when it fell.  It was lying off of...

September 10th and 11th (Thursday and Friday) Two more nice sunny days!  What a treat.  We spent a bunch of time over at the house splitting and stacking our wood.  Our woodpile sure is growing and it smells amazing.  In the afternoon on Friday we left work around noon and headed up to the lake.  We went out to Triple Falls where we spent the afternoon relaxing.  It sure was nice to have some more summer-like weather.  The water was noticeably warmer than it had been two days ago.  Jason was doing some fishing from shore when we noticed a small, strange, eel-like animal swimming along the surface.  At first we thought it was a snake, but soon it swam back down to the bottom.  We watched it for quite awhile, and I used my underwater camera to take a video of it.  It had two red patches on either side of its neck area, and after getting home we identified it as a Lamprey.  It...

September 9th (Wednesday) Our first day off after our 8-day shift, and it was also my birthday.  I enjoyed what felt like a nice long sleep-in as compared to getting up at 05:45 for work, and then Jason gave me my birthday presents and made me a delicious brunch of blueberry pancakes, bacon, and sausages.  Then we were off to the lake.  It was a beautiful, sunny day and glassy calm as we planed our way along the lake.  We went down to the south end to check it out and explore, as we had never been down to that end before.   As the sun got hotter we wanted to enjoy it, and to go swimming, so we headed to our perfect picnic and swimming area of Triple Falls.  There we enjoyed a fantastic afternoon of relaxing and swimming.  The water felt quite a bit cooler than it had the last time that we were there, so our refreshing swims were brief. One time, as I was coming out of the water, I saw a bumblebee struggling on the surface....

August 29th - September 8th   (Note that the date on this is from two months ago.)  Well this blog sure has changed, and with it our lives.  Last year at this time Jason and I were enjoying a true cruising life, with being at anchor every day, primarily feeding ourselves off of the food that we could gather and catch, and exploring.  Now we are living a very different chapter in our lives, and although Covid-19 and the restrictions that have been put in place have put our freedom and cruising life on hold, we are also very happy with where we are.   We are getting to experience a type of life in an area of the world that most people would never consider.  We have endless exploring opportunities at our doorstep and thanks to the generosity of people that we have gotten to know here in Ocean Falls, we have the use of a lake boat, an SUV, and a house, and we have made friends with people who also enjoy exploring.  The vehicle that...

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 ...

July 31st (Friday) Today Jason and I headed back up to the lake.  It was another perfect summer day and we wanted to enjoy it.  We went back to the area of Triple Falls and just relaxed and enjoyed the heat.  I lay on the beach blanket, went swimming, and took pictures, while Jason did some casts from shore, went swimming, and relaxed.  After many casts and a few followers, Jason caught a beautiful, large trout.  We let it go because we already had the three from yesterday for dinner, but it put up a good fight and was a beautiful fish to see.     We made a fire and for lunch we cooked some sausages. There is nothing quite like fire-cooked food, so good! We headed home when the sun went behind the trees.  It was another perfect summer day.  It was so nice to be able to enjoy the sun and the warmth.  

July 29th and 30th (Wednesday and Thursday)   On Wednesday we rested, unpacked, and dealt with our groceries.  It was barge day. On Thursday we headed out for a day on the lake.  It was spectacular; shorts weather first thing in the morning, still, and beautiful.  We got up to Little Red at around 09:00 and planed out over Link Lake disturbing the mirror-like glassy surface that was reflecting the perfect peaks all around.  Because the water level was so much lower than any of the other times that we had been out exploring on the lake earlier in the year there were a lot of beach areas for us to check out.  We stopped at several of them and got out and explored.   I t was nice to be walking around in shorts and t-shirt and flip flops, and feeling the heat from the sun.     Ah summer!     We found some beautiful sandy areas, some large bear tracks, and an old A-frame structure.  The A-frame was stil...

July 28th (Tuesday)   This morning we awoke to a different and beautiful sight.  All of the valleys were filled with a blanket of fog, but all of the mountaintops, including us, were out in the sun.   It was a lovely morning.  I packed up inside our tent, while Jason got things organized outside and prepared our tea and breakfast.  We then enjoyed our breakfast and tea from inside our tent, which was now empty.  With the fly off of the tent we had a full view around us, and we could sit and enjoy it without being pestered by the bugs.  Once our tent was packed up we were all ready to go and we headed out. It was not long before we were down into the trees and making our way along a similar route to which we had come up.  Quite often the terrain was so steep that I had to turn around and climb down like on a ladder using the many strong and well rooted plants as handholds.  Despite the steep and still to...

July 27th (Monday)   We awoke inside of a cloud.   Not only was our view gone, but also our visibility on the ridge was very limited.   At around 10:00 the cloud began to brighten, and by 11:00 it was rapidly breaking up.  We started to get pieces of our view back, a glimpse of the mountaintop, the lake far below, Ocean Falls, and other mountain peaks.  Bit by bit it broke up and shifted, and within the next half hour it was almost completely clear.  We packed up our lunch and safety equipment, and began our hike up to the top.  Today we would reach the summit! We headed up and the going was easy, there was no thick growth to make our way through, only steep rocks and mossy meadows.   Each bit of climb in elevation opened up a whole new part of our ever increasing view and we took many breaks just to look out and take it all in.   At one point we came to a particularly perfect little snowmelt stream tha...