Getting started in 2009

June 10, 2009 We set sail once more

Our cruising season has begun! We had great weather while preparing Tenacious for cruising. We spent our first night after leaving our home dock as guests at the Royal Vancouver Yacht Club. Our dear friends Bruce and Ida are members, and they arranged for our overnight moorage and treated us to a fabulous dinner on the Club deck that looks out over English Bay and the panorama of the Vancouver skyline. Such a perfect beginning!

Our third night out we anchored in a little bay and almost had a run-in with another boat – literally. A 40’ sailboat came in to the anchorage late in the evening while we were belowdecks. The wind was forecast to rise overnight, and when Patrick did his customary pre-bed check of everything, it was gusting 25 to 30 knots, even in the sheltered bay. Our new neighbor had dropped anchor WAY too close to us, and as Tenacious swung with the wind on 225’ of anchor chain, the two boats were within 25 feet or less of each other. We were in 70’ of water, and a 3:1 ratio of anchor rode to depth is bare minimum for safety in these waters. A 5:1 ratio is preferred but not always practical in a small, populated anchorage.

The floating neighbors finally came up on the deck of their boat. When Patrick called out to ask if they would mind letting out more anchor line, they replied (somewhat elliptically) that their anchor was holding just fine. It turned out that they had anchored in the same 70’ depth that we had, and they only had 150’ of anchor line. They clearly didn’t know what they were doing. We took in some of our anchor chain to widen the distance between the boats (putting our own anchor set at more risk) and spent a restless night, waking every so often to check on the situation. We guessed that they had probably chartered the boat they were on, and had little experience on this coast.

At around 6 am, I heard the rattle of anchor chain. Our rookie neighbors slunk out of the anchorage at first light… (click on http://womensvoicesforchange.org/tenacious-on-desolation-sound.htm to link to a more complete published feature story.)

June 16-18 Matilpi and the Latest in Bears
We had a great passage up to Matilpi, one of my favorite anchorages and the site of an abandoned First Nation village, complete with pretty white shell midden beaches. Our second afternoon there, while I was beachcombing in the late afternoon, I looked up to find a bear staring at me. We were in a small section of beach, bordered by trees and rocks, and as we just looked at each other for those first seconds, I really wasn’t afraid. I had time to try to calculate how far apart we were (I estimate about 30 feet) and how much he weighed. I though he was around 200 pounds and probably a yearling bear, out on his own for his first summer without his mother.

I thought I should call Pat to come and get me, and as I pulled out my walkie-talkie, I started to back away from the bear, trying to look "big" and sloshing backwards in the shallows toward a small rock-strewn ravine with a creek at the bottom that bisected the beach. While Pat and I talked on the radio, I kept my eye on the bear. Moments later he calmly turned and walked back up in to the forest.

A few deep breaths later, I decided I’d stay – but on the other, larger part of the beach – and called off the rescue. I needed to cross the tidal creek to get there, and the creek bed was treacherous with seaweed and unstable rocks; I had to watch where I was walking. I was halfway across when I looked up again. And there was that bear, about 35 feet ahead of me. He had gone up into the forest and must have sprinted through the underbrush to get to the other side of the beach ahead of me.

I gave up. Another quick radio call and Captain Pat came speedily to my rescue. The bear, unperturbed by the humans or the dinghy motor, went about his business of turning over boulder-sized rocks on the shoreline, looking for shore crabs to eat. We floated in the dinghy and watched him all the way down the shoreline until he ambled back up in to the woods. He was a mighty nice bear!

June 18-21 Pierre’s at Echo Bay

We had another great experience at Pierre’s marina at Echo Bay. It's the place that has pig roasts on Saturday nights during the summer, and boaters from all over flock to the pot-luck events. It all takes place under a big tent on a huge concrete float that was once a section of a floating bridge in Seattle. We, along with a few other boaters, came in to the marina a couple of days early to help Pierre get ready. More hands are always needed; Patrick repaired two pressure washers, an outboard motor and Pierre’s electric drill, and built some shelves and a step up to the floating lodge and any number of other jobs. I helped unload the boatful of supplies for the little grocery store there, and priced and shelved everything from Cheetos to chocolate sauce.

While we were there, I had a pleasant interlude when I hitched a dinghy ride with some other boaters to visit the home/studio of Yvonne Maximchuk, a local artist whose acrylics and watercolors I have admired (and coveted) for years. She is also a potter and has been experimenting with some intriguing crystal glazes. It was great fun to tour her eclectic home and hear about all of her creative ideas as she and her husband continue to finish building it. Her beautiful garden was a special treat. She sent each of us home with a huge, fragrant pink peony. I have had mine on the table in the upper salon for days. It’s wilting, but I can’t bear to throw it away, it still smells heavenly.

The day of Pierre’s pig roast, the authors of our favorite cruising guide, Bob and Marilynn Hale, came in to Pierre's. They publish the Waggoner's Cruising Guide. My friend Colleen and I planned to hike over the fairly challenging trail to Billy Proctor’s Museum and we invited them to hike with us. Billy's Museum is a treasure trove of local historical memorabilia he has collected over his lifetime of fishing, logging and exploring this coast. It includes everything from ancient stone tools to early 20th century fishing and logging gear. We all had a wonderful visit with Billy, who identified a couple of artifacts I had found. One was a twisted copper nose ring (!) quite similar to others that he had in the museum. Bob Hale brought a video recorder so that he could capture some of Billy’s stories on tape. Billy is a national treasure himself – I think Canadian public television should interview him for a television special.

We walked over to see the progress on the nearby log cabin that our friend and survivalist Nikki Van Schyndel is building by hand. Over the past couple of years she has found, cut, trimmed, notched, fitted and raised all of the logs with the occasional help of a couple of friends. She now has a spacious one-room cabin with a roomy sleeping loft. They just put the roof up and it’s ready for windows and some chinking. It’s SO solid. It looks out on the water where we first saw Nikki in her rowboat several years ago.

On Saturday night we sat with our friends Lorne and Colleen and the Hales for the pig roast. A group of 42 Rotarians came over from Port McNeill – a good time was had by all.

We left the next morning for Blunden Harbour, but Mother Nature had other plans. We listened to the weather report for the Queen Charlotte Strait, which we had to transit for part of the way, and it didn’t sound very attractive. We have been fooled by weather reports before, however, so we thought we’d give it a try and stick our nose out to see how bad it really was. As we got to the end of Wells Passage, we found the wind gusting at over 30 knots and we were in 4-foot seas before we even got to the strait. The cats were absolutely miserable, and I had to clean up the results of their digestive displeasure… so we ducked back in to a very protected little anchorage we hadn’t been in before and spent a quiet night. There was an old, abandoned logging camp in the bay and we spotted a watchman on shore...

June 22-26 Beachcombing at Blunden Harbour
We are in Blunden Harbour now and having cold and rain. Looks like our glorious spring sunshine is on hiatus for a while. I’ve been spending hours and hours on the beach each day, hunting for beads and having some pretty good luck. Today I found a HUGE black bead, the largest I’ve ever found at about ¾ of an inch across. Yesterday I found a very pretty blue glass bottle, about 10 inches high and quite narrow, perhaps an old tonic or patent medicine bottle. It’s quite old and unbroken, the glass surface is satiny with wear. Pat says it was mold-blown and has an applied lip. It was rolling along the bottom, just below the tide line.

My beach attire lately has included long underwear (top and bottom), a turtleneck, a hooded sweatshirt, jeans, rainpants, baseball cap and hooded rain jacket. Between rain showers I can slip off the rain jacket hood. Brrr…

One evening we took the dinghy and had tea and chocolates with new friends aboard their boat. Another night we hosted a pot-luck crab feed. Patrick has honed his skills as a crab hunter to the point where he can tell the size and sex of a crab while standing up in the dinghy, poling himself around in the shallow water at low tide. He searches for them as the dropping tide chases them down the shoreline, and he spots them among the eel grass and sea lettuce. Only males that are over a certain size are legal to take, and he ended up getting 18 huge Dungeness crabs for us while we were in Blunden – plenty to enjoy for several dinners, including the crab feed with two other couples. The cats have been eating well, too. They are starting to expect fresh crab at every meal.

It’s in the 50s here this late afternoon and I’m baking cranberry-orange bread for breakfast, and to warm the boat. If the weather cooperates we’ll backtrack a bit to Port McNeill to re-stock on fresh vegetables and other supplies, then continue north around Cape Caution. We’ll keep you posted.

Orcas and Hot Springs

September 4 Johnstone Strait
This morning we set out to find orcas, and find orcas we did. And Pacific Whiteside porpoises and harbour porpoises and seals ... The easiest way to find out where thewildlife might be is to listen to what we call "The Whale Channel," a VHF radio station used locally by both whale-watching tour guides and researchers to locate and identify cetaceans and other wildlife. There are pods of 'resident' orcas on the Johnstone Strait that have been observed and studied for years. The tour operators can identify the different family groups by their distinctive markings and calls. We drifted among several different family groups of orcas for hours. We watched one group of seven whales as they passed us and we passed them during the course of the afternoon, and after a while we could easily pick them out by the dorsal fin of the largest male which had a very definite split at the top. We carefully avoided approaching too closely or getting in their way at all, but observing them as they traveled, hunted, fed and gamboled about showed me a side of these huge creatures that translates as very caring, loving and playful. They swim close to each other most of the time, always touching, nudging, speeding up and slowing down together, diving and blowing synchronously. Even when they separate for a little while, their reunions are celebrations of bumping and rubbing sides. Periodically one or another would dive down a bit and then pop up with its head straight up out of the water in order to look around, sometimes so high we could see their pectoral fins above the water. This is called 'spy-hopping.' We could hear their vocalizations at times. One call sounded just like they were giving us Bronx Cheer.

September 1 Echo Bay
Our sailing adventure is in its final stages for this year. This week we started heading south in earnest. Before we left the Broughton Archipelago we enjoyed one last Pig Roast at Pierre's at Echo Bay with lots of boating friends. Pat caught a gorgeous 16-pound coho salmon. We plan to enjoy several dinners along with friends thanks to this fish! We spent several very wet days at Echo Bay, visiting Billy Proctor and his wonderful museum and trying to stay dry. I had a chance to spend some time with Billy and he told some wonderful stories about different items in his collection. I brought him some of the artifacts I have found in the past few summers and he told me about what they were. I learned a great deal about the copper bracelets I had found, and also about stone and bone tools. The day after my visit to Billy's Museum I searched a nearby midden beach and made what is possibly my best find ever: a chert adze blade or chisel in near-perfect condition. A few days later I found a black flint projectile point. I have also found Hudson Bay trade goods such as fire strikers and flints, early fish hooks and other relics from the fur trade era.

August 14 Eucott Bay Hot Springs
After we left Ocean Falls we continued north up Dean Channel to find the place where Alexander Mackenzie (a distant relation?) ended his historic trek across Canada in 1793, 12 years before the Lewis and Clark Expedition. He was seeking a trade route to the Pacific Northwest. At the last stage of his journey, his local guides from the Bella Bella tribe took him as far as this point, where he marked the terminus of his journey on a prominent rock with the words, "Alex Mackenzie from Canada by land, 22nd July, 1793." Seeing the words that he wrote in vermilion-stained grease (later carved in to the rock) we felt very close to Mackenzie. And having hacked our way through the vegetation around here, we have tremendous respect for his journey.

It may never known if Mackenzie made it to Eucott Bay and its natural hot spring, just a few miles away. We certainly did, and after scrambling up the slippery rocks and a rather uncertain-looking hand-made stick ladder to the rock pool, we enjoyed the steaming hot bath immensely. We had the entire bay to ourselves as we soaked and marvelled at the view of snow-tipped mountains across the bay. In this picture you can just barely see 'Tenacious' anchored in the distance.

Wild with the Dolphins

Aug. 10, Ocean Falls
Coming up Fisher Channel we spotted a long line of what looked like a rippling boat wake in the distance off our bow. As we came closer we saw it was a huge pod of Pacific White-side dolphins, all swimming in a line in one direction. As we watched they all turned and suddenly swimming the other way. They looked very organized and I suspect they were herding fish ahead of them. When we came within about a quarter of a mile though, all discipline was off. The pod completely broke ranks and surrounded our boat, taking turns surfing alongside and just in front of our bow in the wake. Although each animal traveled his own course, they seemed to read each other's minds as the pod acted and moved together. Leaping and splashing, turning aside and running ahead again, we watched as dozens and dozens of them played all around us for at least 15 minutes. For those minutes we were the star float at the center of a holiday parade. They made us part of the pod for a little while, and we felt the exuberance of being one among so many, all with a single thought--

We came in to the 'ghost town' of Ocean Falls and found it to be fascinating. The few residents are so very friendly, and there is something eerie but compelling about the sight of so many big office buildings, hotels and houses, empty and open to the elements. When Crown Zellerbach had a big pulp and paper mill here in the 1970s it had a population of 5000. Now it's down to 40, but they're still trying to make a go of it. We've stayed longer than we thought we would. We've been watching the local harbour seals patrolling the docks, and yesterday we saw an otter chomping on a fish as he swam along the shoreline. Two good-sized deer grazed along the road and crossed just in front of us as they picked their way from the surrounding forest down to the shoreline in front of town to forage.



This afternoon Pat and I walked through the town. I climbed through the broken windows of several abandoned houses and found hardwood floors, porcelain bathroom fixtures and floor plans that reminded me of Chautauqua cottages. Patrick spotted two bucks relaxing in the yard between two them and we watched them for a while. Eventually they got up and threaded their way down a narrow game trail to a patch of thimbleberry bushes where they browsed, unperturbed by my camera. Occasionally they glanced up at me with their wild, liquid eyes, but they soon returned to the fine business of nibbling on the very freshest of thimbleberry branch tips. Their antlers were still in velvet and I wished I could reach out to stroke them.

Aug. 8, Roscoe Inlet
We anchored all alone at the tip of a narrow bay in Roscoe Inlet with a grassy estuary at the head, and enjoyed hiking up the little creek to see what we could find. I picked a bouquet of wildflowers for the boat; white yarrow, Indian paintbrush, Queen Anne's lace, cornflower, fern and more.


As the sun went down Pat fished over the side at our anchorage and caught a little sand dab as a treat for the cats. While he cleaned it on the fantail, we heard a pack a wolves howling in the twilight. Their cries seem to come from everywhere as they echoed off the steep walls of the mountains that surrounded us.

There's a bear on my beach

Aug. 5 Stryker Island and the McMullin Group

We woke up this morning in a very sheltered anchorage to bright sunshine -- a welcome change from the recent morning fogs that have lasted well into the afternoon. We pulled up anchor and headed for a group of tiny islands that face the Pacific, only to run into dense fog on the way out. With radar and me on bow watch, we slowly picked our way through a maze of little islands and kelp beds (which often conceal submerged rocks) and anchored at our destination. We took the dinghy ashore to find stunning white sand beaches bordered by colossal boulders and tortured chunks of huge driftwood logs. Pat went fishing while I patrolled the beaches, finding beautiful iridescent abalone shells and tide pools full of kiwi green anemones and rose pink turban snails. We jumped back into the dinghy (still in fog with less than 1/4 mile visibility) and went out farther toward the western side of the island group. As we twisted and turned through the swaying arms of kelp we spotted a family of four sea otters sporting in a little cove. Later on the beach we watched a pair of martens (like mink) scamper across the wide beach to their rocky outcropping. I'm finding that I love these wild beaches at the outer edges of the Inside Passage.

Aug. 3 Fisher Point

Today we went up Seaforth Channel toward Fischer Point to see the carved totem that is there. We finally found it in our binoculars, far up above the rocky point, but while I was searching for the carving, I became fascinated by the shore there - it looked like a really interesting wild beach with lots of little islets and passages in front of it. I talked Pat into dinghying me over and dropping me off. He threaded his way through the rocks, islets, logs and kelp beds to leave me on the beach and went back around to the other side of Fisher Point where Tenacious was anchored. The charts indicated a flat, sandy bottom that would almost certainly attract halibut. About ten minutes after he left me as I made my way west along the beach, I heard some noise from a tiny islet about 75 feet from the shore. I stood silently listening for a moment and there it was: the unmistakable whuffling, snuffling, grunting and general bashing around the brush that is a bear. I couldn't see it to tell how big it might be, but my instincts told me to quietly back away from the islet and continue west along the beach. I kept a weather eye behind me as I collected shells from turban snails and tiny abalones. Sure enough about 5 minutes later I spotted a young bear, dark brown and around 200 pounds, making his way from the shore out to the islet. My first thought was that he was joining his mother there, and I was grateful that she didn't get upset at me for being right between her and her baby. The young bear climbed over the rocks and swam the short distance to the islet where I could watch him climb around the perimeter. I continued to explore the beach while he explored the islet, but when he decided to come back to shore, I decided to climb out to the seaward edge of a bare rock outcropping until I knew which way he was going to go once he got back to the beach. I figured even if he came toward me there wouldn't be anything on a bare rock that he would be interested in... Happily, he turned away from me and ambled along the shoreline, sometimes walking on the beach, sometimes wading in the shallow water until he was out of sight.

Meanwhile, I called Pat on our walkie-talkies to let him know that I was sharing my beach with a bear. He had been fishing for halibut and caught a nice one. He'd had another one on the hook and gotten it all the way over to the side of the boat when it 'kicked' the lure out of its mouth right against the side of the inflatable dinghy, puncturing it. He was losing air fast and racing back to Tenacious for repairs when I called. Neither of us was in any imminent danger, although I didn't really want to move around too much knowing there were bears around, so I had to wait for Pat to patch the dinghy, let the sealant dry, re-inflate the punctured pontoon and make his way around Fisher Point again to get me. He did it all in record time, but it was all pretty exciting ...

Aug. 2 Yeo Island
We did some salmon fishing off Idol Point (Seaforth Channel), which, according to local knowledge, is where the big salmon are now. Alas, no joy! But we did enjoy some delicious fish that Pat caught while I was exploring an abandoned Indian village site. He got several red snapper - I found another trade bead! It is a pretty turquoise-green color, although it is fairly worn. At the same site there is what appears to be a decaying fisherman's camp with huge blue tarps forming a sort of structure among the trees. There is even a kind of wood-burning stove made from a 550gallon drum inside. There are collections of fishing floats and stone sinkers scattered around the woods nearby. I also found a tiny old pioneer cemetery there, with three gravestones. Two of them had stylized, moon-shaped faces carved on them and the middle one had the names and early-1900s dates of several children. I can't imagine living in the wilderness and losing so many children at young ages: 3, 5, 8 and 13. So sad!

We (and the cats) enjoyed our red snapper dinner when we returned to our anchorage. Our stir-fried vegetables were supplemented with fresh sea asparagus I had gathered on the beach, and we finished off our meal with spruce tea, made from the new growth at the branch tips of a spruce tree near the beach. I boiled the tips, then let the tea steep for a while. Delicious and full of vitamin C according to a local survival expert. We're living off the fat of the land - and sea.

Northing

July 31 at Shearwater, Denny Island
With 40-50 knots winds in the forecast we decided to duck into the protection of Codville Lagoon on the 27th. The first day, before the front moved in, we hiked and climbed an incredibly muddy trail up to a mountain lake with red sand beaches. Pat actually stripped and went swimming! It was too cold for me, although it was a really nice, sandy bottom. Then we pretty much vegetated for the next two days. I think I'm getting the hang of sleeping like the cats. We made lots of progress on a 1000-piece puzzle and listened to music from my iPod. Pat made some delicious banana bread from scratch, and I made Nanaimo bars, which have a chocolate and coconut base, custard filling and melted chocolate on top. MMmmmmm.

We got tired of sitting around in the gloom on the 29th and took advantage of a break in the rain to pull up anchor. Of course, the rain started again while I was on deck getting the anchor up. After a two-hour run, the native town of New Bella Bella looked pretty grim facility-wise and had no protected anchorage, so we continued another 2 or 3 miles over to Shearwater. They couldn't accomodate us at the dock so we anchored out once for two more nights. I knew we had been at anchor for too long when at about 10 am on Thursday morning I started thinking that Bloody Marys would be a good idea...

Once again we're exploring new territory. This is the farthest north - and west - that we have been so far. We're hearing of good salmon fishing up here, so perhaps we'll have some luck. More later!

July 25 at Pruth Bay
We are at anchor for a few days in a pretty place called Pruth Bay. Lots of boaters told us about it. There is a very luxurious (and very expensive) fly-in fishing resort here, but our anchorage is lovely and private. We're tucked into a little nook close to the rocky shoreline. We took the dinghy to the head of the bay and hiked an easy trail over to the Pacific Ocean side of Calvert Island. There we found a wide sandy beach to explore. It was surrounded by huge rocks that had been carved and molded by the ocean waves for millenia. I found rocks covered with huge mussels and tide pools full of colorful starfish and anemones. We even found what looked like a nursery for baby Dungeness crabs where the outflow from a fresh-water stream met the tideline. There were dozens and dozens of little crabs in there. Pat opened up a few mussels and tossed them in. You should have seen them go after the food! I think this might be a sign that we've been anchored out long enough - we're finding it quite entertaining to watch baby crabs eat shellfish ... It has started raining, so we're prepared to relax and wait out the storm.

July 23 at Open Bight
Yesterday we rounded Cape Caution, taking us beyond the protection of Vancouver Island, and made our way up Queen Charlotte Sound. On our way we anchored for a couple of hours at Open Bight, a beautiful white crescent of beach that I love to walk and explore. Off to one side of the beach, separated from the sand by dense forest and huge surf-beaten rocks, there is a white-shell midden beach that I have wanted to explore. We had tried to get there by dinghy last year but found the waves to high to make a safe landing on the slippery rocks that guard the entrance to the midden. I decided not to let a little wild country stop me, so I scrambled up rocky banks, climbed over and ducked under huge fallen logs, crashed through salal thickets and fern brakes and finally came out to the big rocks, only to find that they were quite steep in places. I really had to gird up my loins and do some rock climbing to get across to the midden. Once there, it was just gorgeous. It was obviously a place where ancient people came to harvest shellfish in the appropriate season. The beach was steep with a huge pile of discarded shells, among them many mussel shells in shades of lavender and violet, accented with gleaming mother-of-pearl where there outer shell had worn away with sun and tides. I found the remains of abalone shells, too, with their multi-colored irridescent reflections, scattered against the matte white of tumbled and broken clam and oyster shells. Wildflowers grew at the edges of the beach, finding a tenuous toehold in the tide-washed crevices of silvery driftwood logs. I could look out over the shells to see Tenacious anchored beyond the kelp that marks the off-shore rocks.

When it was time to go back to Tenacious, the seas had settled and the tide was such that Pat could pick me up in the dinghy, so I didn't have to repeat the scramble over rock and tree to get back to the beach - which was quite a relief to me, as I had pretty much already used up my quote of courage and derring-do for the day, but it is an adventure I'll never forget.

On our way up here we spotted a humpback whale in Fitz Hugh Sound. It was just meandering along so we put Tenacious in neutral and drifted along with the current while I got some video of the whale from the foredeck. We were getting closer to the whale, so Pat went aft to steer away. Just as we were turning away, the whale noticed us, scooped up a huge tail-full of water and flipped it right toward me on the deck. I was soaked! Luckily the video camera wasn't drenched, and I just caught the whale's flukes as he dove below us. We couldn't stop laughing as I stood on deck, dripping...

Dear Ones,
Our 2008 season has begun beautifully. We are getting the hang of things now, and Pat is really taking advantage of currents and tides to speed our travel from place to place. We practically squirted through the series of rapids to get to the Broughtons with the tidal currents behind us, at times we were traveling at 10 and 11 knots – pretty good when you consider our average speed is 7 to 7.5 knots. One early stop was at a favorite anchorage, the site of a long-abandoned First Nation village. Its white-shell midden beaches have given up a number of interesting treasures and this year they did not disappoint: I found trade beads and other artifacts.

On our way north from there we saw a black bear on the beach in Chatham Channel, but as we turned up into Spring Passage we spotted a mother and cub, turning over rocks in search of beach crabs to eat. They spotted us at one point and the mother gave us a rather intimidating stare, but luckily we were far enough away that she didn’t seem to feel the need to carry the message any further.

As we progressed into Havannah Channel we found ourselves surrounded by a huge pod of Pacific White-sided dolphins, arcing through the water all around us. There must have been a hundred of them. Three of them decided to take a break from fishing and amused themselves by racing in our bow wake for minutes at a time. They would pop up just in front of our bow, then weave back and forth across each other’s paths and to the other side of our bow, surfacing for a split second to blow and dipping back down to fly through the water once more. We watched from the foredeck as one occasionally rolled on his side to take a peek to see who was providing the waves. Then, as dolphins do, they were distracted by something else and zipped away to find another occupation. A good friend of ours says that dolphins have Attention Deficit Disorder. Evidence seems to bear this out.

Pierre's at Echo Bay
We came in to the marina called Pierre’s at Echo Bay 4 days before their grand re-opening pig roast on Canada Day, July 1. Pierre and Tove and their new partners purchased the Echo Bay marina at the end of April and have been working madly to build new docks and renovate everything in time for the boating season. There was much more work than could ever be done by their hands alone, so a number of boaters donated their efforts. Pat teamed up with another boating friend and ran all new water lines from shore to the entire dock with hookups at the top of each finger. They did a beautiful and very professional job. I helped out with everything from stocking the shelves in the grocery store to painting the fascia boards around the float plane dock.

We had a great time on Canada Day (July 1.) Pat 'dressed' Tenacious with flags for the occasion. We explored the old Echo Bay Hotel which used to house loggers here, and has been more or less abandoned for 30 years. The old photographs, clothing and other artifacts in the bedrooms upstairs were fascinating to rummage through. The interior has beautiful Craftsman-style woodwork. From there we hiked over a new trail to one of our favorite stops: Billy Proctor’s Museum. It is packed with everything from ancient artifacts to old fishing and logging equipment and everything in between, and he has a story to go with almost every item, most of which he found during his 74 years living in this area. One of the first things you see as you enter is a big rock that he keeps out on the windowsill next to the door of the museum. When unsuspecting visitors ask him about that rock, Bill says, “That’s a leverite.” He pauses and adds, “As in ‘leave her right there where you found her.” He always gets a big laugh out of that one – and it still cracks him up, too. (Pat claims that I bring home far too many “leverites” back from my beachcombing trips.) I examined his First Nations artifacts. With all of the beachcombing I do, it helps to know what the little bits and pieces I come across might be. That night we enjoyed the Pig Roast where we all celebrated being a little part of Pierre’s at Echo Bay.

Blunden Harbour
We’ve been in Blunden Harbour since July 2 and I have been beachcombing the shell midden beach every day for hours. I have found a number of old trade beads and other artifacts in my searches, including a barb from a primitive halibut hook – something I wouldn’t have recognized without seeing one at Billy’s museum.

Patrick has been going on crab hunts early in the morning after he takes me over to the beach in the dinghy and drops me off to hunt for beads. I’m up there as the tide is running out, so as the water levels drop, the crabs have to follow the receding waterline out toward deeper water. Pat stands up in the dinghy and poles himself along in the shallow water, looking like a Venice gondolier, until he spots a crab that looks big enough, then swoops in with a big fish net to capture his prey. Each time he’s gone out he has come back with four huge Dungeness crabs, which it turns out is exactly enough for Pat, me, Amanda and Jessica. You should see those cats go after the crab meat. They really love it! Amanda sits at the table with us like a dinner guest. If I don’t give her a piece fast enough she reaches out with her paw and touches my arm to remind me she’s waiting there. Jessica has better manners. She sits on the step next to me very quietly, and with great dignity, and just waits and looks at me with those huge golden eyes….

The pair of nesting bald eagles that I have seen here over the past several years have a youngster who is still practicing his flying skills. One very windy afternoon we watched him practice soaring, following one or the other of his parents as they flew from tiny island to island over Tenacious’ mast, gliding high, turning and swooping down to the tips of the white caps in search of fish. One of the parents picked a fish out of the water with its talons but dropped it.

This afternoon I was sitting in a sunny patch at the edge of the woods where they meet the white shell beach, near a clump of the hot-pink spikes of fireweed. I was startled by the tiny helicopter sound a hummingbird who zoomed in close to the front of my jacket, perhaps checking to see if the red trim along my zipper had any culinary possibilities. We're having a great time.