Perhaps you've noticed that each blog post ends with the corresponding latitude and longitude for that particular post. While this seems generally salty and makes us look much more nautical than we really are, there's more purpose to it than that.
I've read lots of sailing blogs that always talk about places I've never heard of. They have little meaning unless you can get a context to where these places are. So, from the word "go", we've intended to publish our blog posts within the context of some sort of map. Well, I've finally gotten around to getting the code to work.
If you look over to the right, you'll see a section called Maps. Click on one of the links and you'll be taken to Google Maps where our blog posts will be embedded on a map of the area. You can view our last 10 blog posts or if you'd like, you can see all the blog posts for 2009.
One note - the mapping won't be instantaneous. There could be a few hours delay between the time a blog entry is posted to the time it shows up on the map.
After our time in Shoal Harbour, we were ready for an improvement. Hello, Waddington Bay. This is another typical Broughton anchorage that requires picking your way through rocky forested islands, islets and reefs to enter a fantastic private cove with forested shores and bald eagles fishing for breakfast.
Waddington Bay does get some wind through it in a westerly (correctly predicted by our guide book this time). There's an island smack in the middle of the anchorage so we anchored off the eastern shore of the island and then used a stern tie to tuck our boat right up into the lee of the island. We were pretty happy with this strategy as we watched whitecaps rolling through the rest of the anchorage. The other boats in the anchorage got blown around quite a bit while we only got the occasional gust.
We decided to lay over in Waddington Bay as there was much to explore by kayak. We kayaked around inside the anchorage looking for rumoured trails but never found them. It's just as well because Bonwick Island is supposed to be lousy with black bears. We watched four bald eagles in what looked like a full on street fight. They would all scream at each other, then two fly at each other talons out and duke it out a bit then fly off and scream some more. Pretty impressive birds when they're angry.
Our guide book describes Shoal Harbour as a "well protected and pretty anchorage that provides shelter from west winds". It was just that passage I was contemplating as we were anchored in Shoal Harbour as our boat jerked around on the anchor in 18 knots of wind blowing out of the west and I stared across to the logging operation on shore, the delapidated floating home that was collapsing into the water and the boat that was abandoned and sunk in the mud just off the shore.
Pretty? Nope. Well protected? Uh-uh. Shelter from west winds? Scoff. I will say the shelter from west winds is probably better in the western portion of the anchorage but that was absolutely carpet bombed with crab traps. You could damn near walk from one end of the anchorage to the next on crab floats with out ever touching water. The only reason we anchored here in the first place is the promise of a trail that led from Shoal Harbour to Echo Bay and Billy Proctor's museum. We landed the dinghy on shore and bushwhacked into the woods for about 30 minutes before we decided that the next 30 minutes would probably end with us completely lost or eaten by a bear. So we reluctantly rowed back to the boat and spent the rest of the day down below out of the wind and away from the "scenery".
The Broughtons has been my favorite part of this trip so far. This area is littered with beautiful, quiet, remote anchorages. Shoal Harbour is not one of them.
Leaving Laura Bay headed for Shoal Harbor.
Hello World lying to anchor while we bushwhacked in search of a trail.
This was one of the nicer floating homes in Shoal Harbor.
Lots of places to park your boat in scenic Shoal Harbor!
We reluctantly left Kwatsi Bay in pouring rain and sinking clouds. We pulled out into Tribune Channel and ran smack into 15 to 20 knots of wind smack on the nose. It was yet another day of motoring. We headed for Laura Bay passing 400 foot high granite cliffs on the way named Deep Sea Bluffs by Capt. Vancouver in the year 17[something or other]. Once again, we stern tied in a great little cove surrounded by islands on three sides. We're starting to get used to being 20 feet away from shore. It seems everywhere up here, the shoreline rises straight up from the seabed.
We went down below after getting stern tied and discovered water underneath the port side settee. A lot of water. Awesome. We finally tracked it down to a leaky shower hose in the forward shower. So now we're showerless until we can replace the shower hose. Actually, that's not entirely true. We have a solar shower that we will up and leave on the foredeck. Then we run the hose down through the hatch in the forward head and we can still shower in our shower. We just can't use the shower head.
On our way out of Cracroft, we started seeing what looked like hundreds of dolphins screwing around in the Inlet - literally, some of them were jumping out of the water and doing corkscrews as they bellyflopped back in. They turned out to be Pacific white-sided dolphins and a bunch of them played in our bow wave and around the boat for 30 minutes or so, all while we were motoring along (I thought they'd only do this if we were sailing - glad to be proven wrong!). They'd make eye contact with us as they were playing in the bow wave - turning on their side and just looking at us - as if they were as amazed at us as we were at them. What fun!! Even after they took off, we had an amazing motor up to Kwatsi Bay - this whole area has steep, rocky, evergreen covered slopes, with twists and turns in the inlets and low fog that makes it seem out of this world. There are no houses or buildings on shore. Once in a while we'll see a floating fish farm tucked into a corner somewhere and the only other boats we see tend to be fishing boats. I have no idea who owns all this land - presumably logging companies or the Canadian government. There are a few clear cut patches that we see, but more often than not, we see areas of regrowth. Extraordinary scenery to be sure.
Kwatsi Bay is much of the same, but with waterfalls. It reminded us a lot of Princess Louisa Inlet, but less crowded. We spent about 3 hours trying to anchor, eating lunch and then trying to anchor again, but continually dragging on what sounded like solid rock. So after 3 or 4 attempts, we called it quits and hit the little marina at the end of the bay. There were a few other boats there and we had a great happy hour. One of the boats, s/v Tantalus, had caught a 50lb halibut that day and couldn't eat it all, so they doled out giant fillets to the other boats on the dock - yum!! The owner of the marina, Max, was fabulous - great storyteller and has lived in the area for 20-or-so years, so he gave us lots of good suggestions for anchoring (both in Kwatsi, which we did the next night, and for the rest of the Broughtons). The following day, we were rowing around in the dinghy to go see the waterfall and Jason looks over to the dock and swears he recognizes the Westsail that's docked there. Sure enough, it was our old neighbors from Shilshole who circumnavigated Vancouver Island going the opposite way of us - what are the chances? Had a great time catching up with Jay and Tony on s/v Snowgoose and got more great advice on the west coast.
That brings us to our change of plans. We've been having such a great time exploring British Columbia, that our original plans of heading to Alaska were modified to trying to make it to the Queen Charlotte Islands. Now we've modified it again to just circumnavigating Vancouver Island. (just!) But this area is just so amazing and we know that north of here is even more so, that we're already talking about when we'll come back.
This guy kept turning sideways to look at me. "What are you doing up there? All the fun is down here, man."
On a couple exhales, I actually got wet. Mmmmm... dolphin spit.
We're hopping on our Caliber 40 sailboat and heading out. We are leaving Seattle, WA in the spring of 2009 and heading north towards Alaska. From there, we'll turn around and head south to Mexico. From there, who knows? Bye, TV! Bye, Freeways! See ya later, Employment!
Perhaps you've noticed that each blog post ends with the corresponding latitude and longitude for that particular post. While this seems generally salty and makes us look much more nautical than we really are, there's more purpose to it than that.
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