Cruising Adventures of the Red Witch

September 29th - October 18th What a busy few weeks!!  The search for a truck for us to buy continued since I last mentioned it, and in fact it started to somewhat consume our time.  As the sale of the vehicle we were currently using approached, it became more and more important that we find a truck to purchase, but many times it seemed that there were very few reasonably priced trucks in good condition for sale, and what few there were, got bought up too quickly for us to pursue.  Now that we are living in a house for the winter it is quite important that we have a truck so that we can go and gather firewood.  As Kiki was our “truck” last year, now we need a real truck for this year.   We were lucky that my parents in Victoria were willing to help us with looking for a vehicle, as it was quite a challenging task to do from Ocean Falls.  There was one truck that looked good, the ad was posted at 10pm on a Friday night, my mom called about it on Saturday mor...

September 25th -28th (Friday to Monday)   During our time off, since the weather was so wet, we worked on stuff inside the house.  First we finished cleaning the areas that we wanted to focus on, which were the hallway, living room, dining room, and kitchen.  We repaired some cracks and holes that were in the walls, and we secured some of the ceiling panels that were starting to droop down.  Then we started with painting the ceiling.  When we had cleaned the ceiling we had gotten a lot of dirt off, but it was amazing how much nicer everything looked right away with a fresh coat of white paint.   We put on two coats on the ceilings, and then they were done.     The walls in the hallway were a dark red colour, and it was too dark for such a small area with little light; it was way too much.     In order to cover over the dark colour we had to do two coats of primer.     Even though it was just the primer,...

September 24th (Thursday) Our back yard smells amazing because of the constant fragrance from our yellow cedar wafting out of our woodshed, and we have five Stellar Jays that come and ask for food.     Sometimes one of them will come and sit on our windowsill looking at us and tapping on the glass asking for food.     Other times they will sit on our deck and squawk to get our attention.     One of them is super friendly and will even hop right up and take food from our hands, the other four are more timid, but they all stop by to say, “Hi”. We were also paid a visit by a large black bear that decided to come up onto our back deck to get out of the rain.     We had no idea that it was there until Jason saw it out of the back door window.     When Jason yelled at it, it looked up, looked at us, and then slowly lumbered its way out onto the outer part of our deck, out into the rain.     I worried that it may feel trapped, since t...

September 23, 2020 (Wednesday) The next few posts are from our six days off of work between shifts, and it rained every day.  We had a storm move through on the Central Coast that brought strong winds and very, very heavy rains.  It was a perfect week to be living in a house instead of the boat.  It was between 8 and 13 degrees outside pretty much the whole time, and it poured rain.  In the boat we would have been struggling with moisture, but instead, we were enjoying the spaciousness of a house.   When we went to check on the boat, instead of the hatches dripping, windows wet, and the underside of the bed damp with condensation, we found that everything was dry.  It was amazing how much of a difference it made that we were not there cooking with our propane stove, which creates moisture just from being on.  It sure will be better for the boat with us living in a house this winter, and it will also be better for us....

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 ...