may 18

May 18th Rescue Bay

We left Shearwater at about noon on Sunday. We had to wait for the small grocery store to open up. Normally they are not open on Sunday but being a long holiday weekend for Canada they had Sunday holiday hours. Not sure why, there were no more people on the holiday Sunday around the dozen or so buildings in Shearwater than there were the entire previous afternoon and evening.

We had no more than just left the harbor when I spotted a whale. It appeared to be a relatively small one swimming slowly through the channel in front of Bella Bella. Then we had just rounded the lighthouse north of Bella Bella when I spotted more whales on the other side of the channel. We motored over for a closer look since they appeared to be larger and much more active. One was rolling, splashing with his fluke and raising quite a large froth of water as it was feeding. We watched for several minutes and tried to get some photos but about that time the batteries went dead in the camera. So while I am down below changing them I keep hearing Chris saying ‘oh my god, oh my, oh you gotta see this.’ Of course I saw none of it and did not get one decent photo. While I was down below the whale had surfaced about 50 feet from the boat and was rolling and splashing and it would have made for some great photos. The key words here are would have made great photos.

Chris’s trip is complete, she has seen her whale up close and personal.

At one point I was confused by the marker buoys. There were two, one green and one red that appeared to be marking a channel. And if it was a channel then you would go between them if you followed the rules of the road, In this case we were headed to the sea from a harbor and therefore the red should be on the port and the green on the starboard. If you are returning from sea the red buoy’s should always be kept on the right side or starboard side of the boat. “red right returning”. But upon closer scrutiny they appeared to be marking a reef and one needs to go to either side of the buoy’s. We made the right choice and would have had plenty of depth either way this time but it does point out the need to be vigilant and paying close attention even at 10 knots, cause lots of things are happening and there is a lot of information that you need to know on the charts and radar in order to make good decisions. I have my computer navigation and gps system up and running as my primary navigation, I have a backup plotter that the radar image overlays and then I have Ed’s old charts that I try to keep out and follow. I have several guide books that talk about the route, the bays and anchorages and I have a chart book that I follow along with. There is plenty of information available to keep one out of trouble but you need to be watching and checking all the time. I have redundant systems because more than once the GPS at critical times has suddenly blipped and the boat symbol, us, has suddenly jumped a hundred yards off course and the little green boat icon is suddenly showing that we are in the middle of an island or where we really do not want to be. Fortunately the secondary plotter does not do that and since I can visually see that we have not run aground it is relatively simple to deduce that the GPS is wrong not the pilot.

A little further along the route we spotted about a dozen porpoise swimming towards the boat. As they got to us they turned and began to swim in the bow wave. I ran down to get pictures while Chris piloted the boat. She was not to happy cause she wanted to go down to the bow and watch and told me I better get some good shots or I was a dead man. I am not dead but I got lots of pictures of splashing water and not one that shows the black and white mammals as they swim just under the surface of the water just five or six feet from the bow of the boat. Next time I pilot the boat and Chris gets to go see the fish.

About ten minutes later as were getting ready to enter Reid Channel I spot a twin engine amphibious plane approaching us from dead ahead. He is about 20 feet off the water and headed right at us. Chris starts yelling, do something, hes going to hit us, do something. I had about 10 seconds to grab the camera and start doing something. I got three shots of him as he came at us at about 180 mph, 20 feet off the water and passed between Glen and I at the height of our flying bridge. I could look out level and see the pilot in the cockpit of the plane. He was on a normal flight from somewhere north to Bella Bella and decided to give us and his passengers a thrill. 2 minutes later a second identical type plane did the same thing and I got video of him. He was about 50 feet off the water so it was not quite as exciting.

The rest of the trip to Rescue Bay was really pretty uneventful. It was another gray day, with high clouds and at times mist and fog down to the water. We anchored in 50 feet of water with only two other sail boats here. We put out the shrimp pots and a crab pot and still have to check them this morning. Not looking forward to that since it started raining last night and is raining pretty hard this morning. Another day of rubber boots and rain gear. We have been pretty lucky actually, it has rained at night but the days have generally been really nice. This is the hardest it has rained on the trip so far.

We kayaked around the bay last night and checked out Jackson Narrows by Dinghy. All the guide books are written in a manner to make everything sound daunting and dangerous. So far everything we have encountered has been less than what the books have described. Not that we are going to take anything for granted or with a lack of respect but we have not found any of the passages or rocky entrances all that difficult to navigate through. Jackson narrows is an example. There is one fairly narrow spot in the narrows but there appears to be plenty of water even at low tide and we did not find the currents that overwhelming but we will wait for slow on a rising tide before we give it a go with the big boats today. The narrows are about 100 feet wide at the narrow point and there is a dog leg turn that you have to make but it really does not appear to be as tight or as difficult as the guide books make it sound. Of course if one of us goes aground I will edit this paragraph later.