Sunday 21st April
Cold & Rainy, yet I hear it’s unusually hot in the UK for an Easter weekend.
Fixed the shower sump pump, dismantled it, put it back together and it worked, no idea what was wrong.
Monday,
More great radio, after a week of programmes on mental health issues, many quite harrowing stories, we have moved onto climate change debates. A great story tonight about Sudbury, now a lovely green city which was once a Chernobyl style hellhole in Ontario. Devastated by extensive Nickel mining with huge piles of sulphur waste that killed off everything in the area. A great example of industry working with residents to help each other. Other phone ins pitting youngsters against older people living in mining towns. One young teenager was saying “But we might all be doomed if we don’t act now quickly”, and a mining resident replying, “ I agree, but why should we do anything when the Chinese aren’t, and what about our jobs”. I can see this isn’t going to be easy.
Later Adam Cohen, son of Leonard was on, he sounds just like a younger version of his dad, a few thousand more Gitannes and you won’t be able to tell the difference. He was lovely and is releasing more of his fathers material that hasn’t been heard before.
I took a long walk in the rain today, such great scenery here, even in the rain, I love the individuality of every building. I still haven’t taken the ferry over to the main Island yet, perhaps this week.
I have noticed that one of the reasons for the wifi getting weak/strong is due to the big tides. The boat is so low, I lose site of the office aerial at low water.
Tuesday
Randy, who has the gill netter (a kind of fishing boat) over on the next pontoon shouted over that if I liked crabs he was going to be cooking a few later and I should pop over. He had cooked a load he had caught earlier that day and I confessed to my ignorance of crab eating etiquette, Ron from ‘Ron’s fishing trips’ who has a big motor launch next to Randy offered to teach me, He took a cooked crab and smashed its back on the edge of the pontoon, then ripped out the lungs, and the washed them under the tap. He told Randy that he had cooked them all wrong, but Randy shot back that Ron was from Alberta and how would he know anything about fish! A lively debate ensued, and Ron promised to get me some properly cooked Crabs. All the same they were very tasty.
Wednesday
I have spent most of my time this week writing SQL queries and knitting it into web sites. I had finished most of the work before I came out, but the customer asked for a load of changes at the last moment. It’s kind of OK because it’s been so cold and windy I haven’t been able to do any outside jobs anyway. And it pays for even more luxury down the road.
I’m making notes about all the jobs I need to do on the boat, a big one I’m looking at is re-wiring to make the boat work well on 110v or 240v as we have a hacked system now but as I’m not likely to see 240v shore power power for a year or more, it seems best to get the 110v working so I can have the heater and the toaster and the kettle all on at once.
The barometer has been around 1035 for a few days now, I have never seen that before, crazy high by my standards.
Thursday
Took the ferry to Port McNeil today, gave myself two hours to do the shopping and ended up running for the ferry back, only to find it delayed by 30 minutes. It was great to see such a choice of food in the big supermarket. There’s a small chandlers there as well, which was quite well stocked.
Fri/Sat, more programming, with a trip to the Finnish baker for a fresh sourdough loaf. He seemed to really appreciate my comments on how nice his fresh bread was, almost as if I was the first to complement him. He also makes great ciabatta rolls. On the way back I called into the Co-Op hardware store, a branch of the main co-op downtown, a really good range of boat spares, very impressive for such a small island.
More CBC Radio 1 and a great program called Ideas that featured a women called Gareth Peirce who is a 79 year old female English solicitor and human rights activist. She spoke very powerfully about some terrible breaches of human rights and international laws/treaties being carried out by governments, including sadly, the current British government.
Sunday
More people are arriving every day and opening up their boats, getting ready for the new season. Today actually felt like spring, still chilly, but possible to sit in the cockpit and work.
This morning the radio had a program explaining the problem with relying on quantum physics, and how we have to face up to the reality that great as it is, we are probably missing the point. I’m sure we would all agree with that (could do with a puzzled looking emoji here).
Either the radio is showing off, or they’re all dead clever here.
People are getting flooded out all over Eastern Canada right now, and they are talking about relocating whole communities away from flood plains and rivers. Some people who were flooded last year, repaired and rebuilt as they were told it was a ‘one in a few hundred year event’, but because it’s now happened two years in a row there’s lots of talk of Climate change being responsible. I think this is bad science, but great publicity for the cause.
I uploaded the pictures in higher resolution than normal, as I had some good internet in the week. But I think WordPress is throttling the size back and I can’t be bothered learning how this all works, but hopefully you will get a feel for how lovely the bay is here. I had a great walk around taking the snaps one evening this week.
Paul Collister
I find this new version of wordpress much harder to compose posts than I’m used to. hence a big block of pictures.
Monday 29th April.
I tried to post this yesterday, but no internet, so today I went downtown, the shop was shut, the cafe closed too, no internet available anywhere, but by the time I got back to the harbour, there was a decent wifi signal present, so I did a bit of work and posted this blog. It’s like summer today, so I have a few hours left, I’m going to rip the rest of the steering out now.
Paul Collister, Sointula.
This is the steam powered clock in the city’s Gas district on the waterfront.
And these guys must make most Canadians groan in the way I do whenever an American film on the UK has the obligatory red bus/ telephone box and beat bobby. There’s no shortages of tourist gift stores in this area, much like every city we have ever visited. However a lot of the gifts were high quality and if I was richer, everyone might have got Vancouver branded clothing for christmas.
So we had a pleasant dinner in a grand railway station building at the Waterfront station then headed off to the airport where we got a budget flight home on Air Transat. The 9 hour flight went quite quickly and we were soon back in dreary Manchester on the train home to Liverpool.
The pump cleaned up ok, but it took a while to find the correct pump in the workshop manual as there are two different types used depending on age.
Further inspection revealed that I didn’t have any spares, even though I couldn’t see any wear on the rubber o-ring that was in there, and the diagram didn’t show any other seals. I filled the chamber with water and nothing dripped out. I wondered if perhaps the pipes feeding/taking water to the pump were leaking at the join and the water being squirted to the back of the pump. Unlikely, but it was my only hope for a quick repair.
After our trip to Princess Louisa Inlet we returned to Egmont, this time to the public wharf where I messed up the mooring, I had assumed that as the tide was flooding I would be pushed away from the boat we were rafting to, so got really close, as it turned out the tide was running the other way, so my bow was pushed onto the boats quarter, and my stern was soon pushed onto the boat behind him. How embarrassing, I thought I was getting better at this. However the tide wasn’t strong and we pushed off, the fenders prevented any damage, but as always some part of my boat wanted to leave me for the other boat, and in this case it was the barbeque that was trying to merge with some steelwork on the other boat. A good push and we were all sorted. The reason the current was the opposite to what I expected was due to it reversing direction near the shore, I should have considered this especially given the name of the marina next door ‘BackEddy Marina’.
The next day we headed off to Teakerne Arm, Captain Vancouver spent two weeks anchored here recuperating from the horrendous time he was having in Desolation Sound, he gave it that name more because of his mental state at the time, we thought it was a fantastic place, but it was sunny for us, he was there in storms, and couldn’t find anywhere to anchor, eventually getting into Teakerne Arm. My main reason for for visiting this Arm was simply because if he spent so long here, it can’t have been that bad. As it turned out it was a great spot with wonderful waterfalls at the head.
Anchoring was fun, three boat lengths from the shore it is 60m deep, two boat lengths off it’s 20m. so we dropped the hook in 30m and reversed until the anchor gripped the side of the near vertical wall below us. We ran a stern tie ashore, tightened up on the chain and the anchor seemed happy. 
In a small cove beside the waterfall we spotted a house that seemed to be in trouble.
The following morning we pushed on to Blind Channel, this was slightly challenging as we had to pass through three sets of rapids, Yaculta, Gillard & Dent, each about 2 miles apart. We were going against a flood tide, so to make the first rapid at slack water meant we would be 30 minutes late for the last rapid. So we aimed to get to the first on the end of the ebb, and race through arriving at the middle rapids just before slack and the final and most dangerous rapids at Dent at slack water. I spent an hour working out tides and passage planning, we ended up having to leave at 07:30 and we arrived just 15 minutes early at 11:38, we dawdled for 10 minutes then went for it. Everything went well right up until the last set of rapids, Dent, featuring the scarily named ‘Devils Hole whirlpool’, which the pilot says “Those who have looked into the Devils hole won’t ever want to revisit it”. Just as we approached I saw a tug emerging but couldn’t yet see its tow. The tugs rarely are pointing, or even travelling in the same direction as their tow, and require a very wide berth. I had to steer to starboard a lot to miss him and that put our course directly over ‘Devils Hole’, looking through the binoculars I couldn’t see any holes in the water so we pushed on, I was soon able to scoot around the back of the tow and hugged the coast, just missing the hole, which just looked like flat water to me. 
Yet again, my timing worked out well, except for the fact we had another 2 hours of sailing to go, and when I looked on the chart 2 hours later, I saw Greene Point rapids coming up in a few minutes. I hadn’t even realised they were there. Kathy took the helm, slowed us down, while I scanned the pilot books and found out they can be quite dangerous on spring tides, and we were bang on the highest tides and arriving at maximum flood, the worst time. I couldn’t quite understand what all the fuss was about as we approached and decided we should give it a whirl anyway, we turned into the turbulent waters and headed for the resort we could see in the distance. Everything worked out well, besides one bit of a shove and a splash of waves on the boat we were through. It was only later that I worked out the chart was wrong and the rapids were over to our starboard side as we turned to port, missing the worst of it.
A walk along the beach revealed this old winch, again used for logging.
A trip through the forest led to a 600 year old cedar tree.
I sent a postcard to an old friend from here, and the very next day the postman turned up in their plane to collect the mail and deliver new mail. We really are in the middle of nowhere here, It’s a big island, but has no electric, water or telephone. Electricity comes from a generator and a water powered turbine that makes use of the strong currents here. Water from a brook. Amazingly the internet is very good, but I think that is via satellite.
I had wondered how you tie up a plane to a dock?
It seems a round turn and one half hitch is all that’s needed!
After two days in Sidney, a town with a lot of book shops, we had to leave as the marina was booked up for a regata, we had gone there to have a break and enjoy Kathy’s birthday, we had hoped to find a good Indian restaurant, but the only one there had closed down. So we had to move along the coast to Van Isle marina which was also quite a posh affair, but a few miles out of the main town. It did have a lot of marinas and boat repair yards, I wandered around and found two chandleries, one with a load of Sikaflex (Marine Sealant) at a silly low price, I had to buy two tubes, even though I don’t think I can use them before their ‘use by date’
The main reason for going to Pirates cove was that it was just an hour from Dodd Narrows, as I mentioned before, a quite scary pass where the currents run fast and dangerous. we needed to pass through around 9am so this was a great spot to leave from. As it turned out, there was no drama, passing through at slack water makes life very easy.
Early the next morning we were on the move again, Lasqueti is about half way across the Strait of Georgia and we needed to get right over to the North eastern side in order to visit Desolation sound and the other back channels that we had heard so much about. Around this time I asked Kathy to check out if there was anywhere she really wanted to see, or could find any ‘must see’ places on the net, she quickly came up with the idea to visit Prince Louisa Inlet, a small inlet of outstanding beauty with a giant waterfall at the head called Chatterbox Falls. Looking at the chart, this was an easy diversion from here, so we headed north and cut through the Agamemnon channel up to Jervis Inlet which lead to our inlet.
As we passed under the cables they just seemed to get lower and lower, I really don’t think I could ever do the intercoastal waterway up the eastern side of the USA as so many of the bridges there are just a little bigger than my mast and I think I would freak at each one. 
However we passed through and looking back felt a bit silly as for some reason now they seemed to be about a mile up in the sky. Around here we passed another sailing boat who was making about 1 knot under sail, there was next to no wind. I admired him for not rushing and burning fuel like us. He was sitting in his boat saying to himself “Sister Midnight, I know that name…??”
We headed down to the pontoons to see how it all worked when we met the sailor heading up to the shop, I stopped and asked him if he was the skipper on the yacht that just arrived, he said yes and we chatted, I told him we had passed him under the pylons and he told us he was down from Sointula and I explained that we were heading up there. At this point he realised why he thought he knew Sister Midnight, he asked my full name, then introduced himself as Jim the guy I had been emailing with over the last few months as he was going to be looking after our boat while we returned to the UK. he had just sailed down here for a few days exploring. Quite a coincidence. We bumped into him later in the grocery store, but that was less of a coincidence as the grocery store was the only shop for 5 miles and there was nothing else to do 🙂
When we arrived it was lovely and sunny but in the morning the fog had descended and I worried if we would be ably to make the 35 miles up to Princess Louisa Inlet, but a local arrived in a small skiff and he told me the fog was only around the marina and was caused by the colder water you get around the rapids. 
We set off and sure enough the fog was very isolated around the marina, the pic below is looking back to the marina from about a mile away.
At the head of this inlet is the famous chatterbox Falls, in June the sheer mountainside vertical walls all along the inlet are flowing with waterfalls 
We found space on a public dock maintained by the park authorities. I’m not used to having to moor next to planes but I just treated it like a boat and all went well
The small float plane had just arrived with a bride and groom and photographer for some wedding shots in front of the waterfall, after those shots they pranced around on the pontoon for ages before shooting off in the plane. Watching the plane go round and round in circles to gain enough height to clear the mountains made me realise just how high these granite walls reached.
The next day a big motor launch $4.5Million dollars worth, arrived and I helped the skipper by taking his stern lines, we chatted and he had seen my “Liverpool” reg on the hull and explained his guests on the boat were two ladies from the UK, so later we were surprised when two giggly northern women turned up, banging on our hull and insisting we join them for drinks on the mega yacht, one of them was from Preston, the other frm Nottingham. We had a nice time chatting with them and a few other guests on the boat, a very luxurious affair, I noted the kitchen was way better than my own, and I’m talking about the one in my house!
Today we left Princess Louisa Inlet early to pass the rapids at slack water, this time at low tide, making the channel even narrower. On the way out we saw some new waterfalls that had been dry on the way in.
“La Boheme is one in a series of William Atkin designed double-enders. This one is the Eric. Modeled after Norwegian rescue boats at the turn of the century, the Eric is said to be “the best boat for the worst weather”. La Boheme’s keel was laid in 1926. She was completed and launched in 1938 out of Victoria, BC and has plied the waters of the North West ever since. Constructed of Port Orford cedar on oak frames, La Boheme is stout, sea-kindly and extremely comfortable as cruiser.”
One for Taffy.
Boats like this one above are scattered around the yard, this is an old classic cruise ship. One morning I looked up after hearing some swishing of the water next to us to see this yacht (below) passing by. A fairly common sight here. I think I will bring the boat back here next year to do any big jobs like the mast refurb I’m thinking of.
Just along from the museum we realised we were in Twin Peaks country land, so we drove out to the back road where David lynch turned up one day and planted the sign below. They took some pictures, pulled the sign and drove off. 
Much later the city of Snoqualmie put up a replica sign, but it has since been stolen.
