This is how we do.

Some of you may be wondering what happens when two people that, may or may not have a slight drinking problem, quit their jobs and sail off on their boat to far flung places that have really shitty, really expensive beer (I’m looking directly at you Canada). What happens? Since we are working with a limited amount of money, $50 dollar cases (yup!) of shit beer rarely make it on the shopping list. We may be crazy, but not crazy enough to do this completely sober.

So with the help of some of our equally crafty/creative friends, and by crafty/creative I of course mean alcoholic. But the fun, lovable sort of alcoholic. Not the greasy, urine soaked kind. We have a method of brewing very tasty beers on board…..and as soon as the rum runs out, I’m gonna have to figure out a way to build a small still (I am now looking directly at you Philthy, HI PHIL).

As proof, I give you the fruits of our first batch of boat brewed beer.

Five……FIVE growlers of beer!! HHAHAHAHAHAHHHAAAHHAAAAHHAA

Bear Hole Brown Ale. We are anchored in Nimmo Bay, enjoying pint or two right now.

Cheers!!

We actually brewed in a couple weeks ago in a place called Forward Bay. And bottled it 3 days later in Potts Lagoon.

As I mentioned in a previous post, we called it Bear Hole Brown because on the day we brewed it, we went for a hike and had to basically crawl through/past what could have only been described as a bear hole. No doubt a bear slept there.

Anyway…..mmmmmmm beer!

Posted in Adventures, Big trips, Canada Trip, Palarran | 9 Comments

Finally got some internet, so you get a big ass update.

I’m gonna write this assuming anyone reading it has or will take a look at the trail of digital bread crumbs we’ve been leaving at our tracking sight. That way I don’t have to go into to great a detail on where the places I’m referring to.

I’ve put up a few post about some of the places we’ve stopped and visited so far. I think the last place I talked about was Wallace Island in the Gulf Islands and then a short update about a dive we did in Naniamo. All of that, to us seems like a very long time ago.

So, here we go.

After our tour through the Gulf Island and a couple days stop in Naniamo we had to make a move up and across the Straights of Georgia. This by the way is no small feat, especially at this time of year. The wind and waves on that particular piece of water can, does and fuggin did get nasty. The day we left Naniamo the wind had been blowing out of the south (good for us…..sorta) for a few days and on the day we left had died down a little bit. It was actually pretty good sail and we got to our destination in really good time under head sail alone. Was not the warmest or driest day on the water, but you take what you can get.

We took a short video, but as all things in these situations, pictures and videos never come close to capturing what it conditions actually are like, but here is a bit of what it was like. It was taken just as we were approaching the southern tips of Lesquiti and Texada Islands.

I was gonna upload it to youtube, but the internet connection I got right now is way to slow for that. Some other time.

Sailing between those two islands, into Bull Passage was awesome. White caps and following waves all around us. To port were high granite cliffs (I have no clue really, I’m not a fuckin geologist), and to starboard were steep sided mountains covered in trees…Pine..Cedar? Whatever, dark green. The tops of the mountains were partially covered in fog/clouds. The entrance to Bull Passage was less than a quarter mile wide, so the whole thing had an Isle of King Kong vibe to it. So god damn cool.

About ten minutes after entering the passage, the waves ceased and the winds died to almost nothing. We dropped sail and motored to our anchorage in Deep Bay on Jedidiah Island.

So many more pictures like this in the future.

Deeper than it looks.

Hiking the island was saw flocks of wild sheep, and gathered half a backpack of Oysters for dinner later that night. Just freaking awesome….deliciously awesome. The Oysters, not the sheep.
We left there the next day, planning on going to Rebbeca Spit, but the winds built up so much and the waves were getting had gotten dangerous, so we decided to seek shelter in a harbor close by, a place called Gorge Harbor.

Now we were in the Discovery Islands and the problems of the Straights of Georgia were behind us. Now we only had to worry about the rapids that separated us from the Broughton Islands.

There are a number of ways to get from where we were, to where we wanted to be. We chose to go through what is called the “middle route”. Five sets of rapids, that if taken at the wrong times will result in very wet, shitty endings. The plan is to time it out to hit the rapids at or near slack water. Which is the small window of time where the tide switches direction and is not moving at all, or very nearly at all. So for the next four or five days we spent going over charts, tide tables, current tables, setting alarms to get up early as hell, or waiting around to hit the rapids late in the day.

Since I’m writing this, you are safe in assuming that we planned it all ok and made it through safely.

The first and easiest was Surge Narrows, and it was only the easiest because we had actually already been through going the other way on our last trip up here in 2008.

After that rapids, we stopped at a group of islands called the Octopus Islands. Had planned on staying the night there and moving on early the next day, but as I was looking at the tide tables, I realized that the next slack would be at 5pm. Which gave us 4 or 5 hours of exploring, hiking and a chance to hang another bit of decorated driftwood in yet another “crusiers cabin”. Even saw one left by friends of ours Pam & Timber.

Next rapids were called Upper and Lower rapids, and for some dumbass reason, Upper rapids were first? They are close togather and are taken one right after another. The trick here is to hit the first (Upper) a little bit early, so you have time to get through the second set (Lower) before the water starts flowing again and the rapids and whirlpools set up again. Again, your reading this, we did it. No drama to report.

After those rapids our destination was a bay called Shoal Bay. At one point on the way there we were were surrounded by a huge pod of dolphins, but in my excitement, I could not find and once found get the GoPro turned on fast enough to record them as they swam in our bow wake.

The next day we took a hike up the side of the mountain to an old abandoned gold mine. We super bummed when we got up all they way up the mountain at the entrance to the mine and realized we did not have a flash light with us. We pulled out our little camera and would snap a picture, which would give us half a second of illumination, then we’d look at the picture and walk forward 5 or 6 feet and repeat the procedure, we did this ten times or so, then started thinking…..one of these times there is gonna be a freakin bear in the picture. And neither one of us wanted to hike back down the hill with a pant load of poop in our drawers or, you know….be dead. So we backed out and found a great spot on the side of the mountain that over looked the anchorage, had a beer and took a few pictures.

Hey! I can see my house…errr, boat from here.

The crab pots were absolutely full when we got back.

Only two sets of rapids left. Green Point rapids first. So up at the crack of dawn and hit them just right. No drama. Next up was Whirl Pool Rapids, but since it was only a few miles away we had a few hours to kill. So we found a little unnamed cove to tuck into and drop the anchor. Tawn took a nap and I rigged up the fishing pool and pulled in a HUGE Ling cod. Also, took a little time to bag another island in our quest to conquer over 100 islands this summer.

Almost a quarter of the way there.

Once past Whirl Pool rapids we turned in to Forward Bay, and found a great spot to anchor called Douglas Cove. The sun came out, so did the hammock and we cooked up half the ling cod and had some awesome fish sandwiches. After a nap or two in the hammock we went to shore an hiked across the island to the beach on the other side, did a little beach combing then headed home to brew up a batch of beer. Which we named “Bear Hole Brown Ale”, after a bear den we had to crawl past on the trail.

Mmmmmmm, bear…..

Hiking around up here is no joke. Luckily my buddies (Robbie, Eric and Dan) back in Seattle had a completely custom, completely bad ass axe made for me before we left.

Bears….BEWARES!!!

The following day we caught up again with Kevin on Andante and had a great fire on the beach and some awesome fish, and prawn taco tuesday night BC style. We also unofficially named the point where we had the fire, Taco Point.

The next couple days found us in Lagoon cove, up Knights inlet and Glendale cove were we saw a mamma grizzly and her two cubs on shore from the dinghy. Very awesome thing to see. I’ve been around black bears before in Alaska and Colorado while hiking. I’ve never seen a grizzly before, they are freaking huge.

The anchorages, Islands, coves, inlets up here are too many to name. And I don’t know if anyone wants to read a blow by blow of each day. But I’ll figure out a way to get shit updated a little more regularly.

Right now we are anchored out in a place called Echo Bay. We have been so much eating Crab, Prawns, Clams, Oysters, Mussels, and fresh caught fish that I got a little excited to have a cheeseburger the other night. The fugiswrong wit me?

Shot of the backyard.

Posted in Adventures, Big trips, Canada Trip, Palarran | 3 Comments

Do the unpaid interns get Glocks?

To all my friends that have taken off cruising before us and keep a blog, and to complete strangers who’s blogs I read and are out sailing, I’m sorry! Completely and truly sorry. I would sit at my desk in my grey little cube and talk shit about you everyday that you didn’t put up a new post. “What the fuck else do they have to do” I’d say. Then follow it up with a vow, that when I did go, I would put up new post at a shocking rate. No one would have to read work related emails. I’d entertain the masses.

And yet, here I am. Three weeks in and what? Maybe 3 post…including this one.

In my…..ehem…our defense. It’s not that easy. Alot of it is due to no internet access. Some of it is due to the shear about of awesomeness that is our day to day lives :-P that I cannot be bothered to sit down and type something out. And a goodly chunk of it is pure unadulterated laziness. There, I said it. And I won’t take it back.

But to make up for it I’ll post this video my buddy Kevin on his boat Andante took while Tawn, Him and I went SCUBA diving on a wreck (RivTow Lion) in Naniamo, BC a few days ago. He did the editing, and voice over.

Enjoy:

I’ll buy the first person a beer that can tell me what the title of this post references. No cheating (aka Googling)

Posted in Adventures, Big trips, Canada Trip, Palarran, Scuba | 7 Comments

Cat ladies,stale hard candy and other musings.

Look at at map of the Gulf Islands in Britsh Columbia, Canada. You will see a pant’s load of islands and even more places to anchor in and around those islands. I’d guess at least seven to eight pant loads. That is a lot of choices. That is lot of pants, it’s actually more pants than I even own. So to say choosing a place to go is overwhelming is not an exaggeration.

We’ve been through here before, back in 2008. We didn’t really stop and check anything out that time. We were in a hurry to get further north to meet up with friends. And then on the way back south at the end our vacation we were running out of time so we sorta blazed through again. And truth be told, we had sorta planned to blast our way through on our way north this year as well. But as we were sitting at anchor in Bedwell Harbor after clearing customs. We realized we had a lot more time to spare this time around….alot more time. And could not come up with a good reason to be moving so quickly.

We sorta decided to stop in Montegue Harbor or possibly Ganges to check them out, but a chapter in one of our guide books made a really good argument for Wallace Island.

We anchored in Princess Bay on the northwest side of the island. Its a long, narrow bay and the guide books indicate that stern tying to shore is the way to go. After the business of making sure the boat will be where we parked her (aka, Anchoring) and lunch, and a nap. We took the dinghy to shore and went for a hike.

Near the top of the list of things that I really like, is randomly finding things purposely left by others. If they put a date and a name on it, even better. When we were living in Colorado and hiking all the time. I loved finding cairns on the top of peaks with an old coffee can buried in it. Inside the coffee can would be an old notebook or two, with names, dates, and a short note about who/what/where.

As we were hiking around the island today, we came across an old ass cabin. The outside of the cabin was absolutely covered with pieces of driftwood. Each piece of wood had a boat name on it. And names, home ports. And Dates!

As we were looking at all the names, I spotted a boat name I recognized. s/v Eagle, which belongs to friends of ours, Tom & Jeannie. They were here, according to the chunk of driftwood, in 2011. They are now in La Paz, Mexico. Which is where we will be later this year.

S/V Eagle

We thought it was just the outside of the cabin was covered with alot of driftwood, the inside was out of control. It looked that little old ladies house down the street from where you grew up. You know the one. The one that your mom would not let you eat anything she gave you to take home. Lot of cats, not all of them alive.

Here KITTY KITTY!!

Anyway, as we were looking at all the names and places. We spotted another friends boat.

S/V Pearl

And a boat we don’t know, but somehow wish we did….or maybe not. Could go either way really.

Blame it on the cats.

We also spotted our arch nemesis’s boat…..BELLA STAR! Now we have a mission!

First we had to find the perfect piece of wood. Then write up a list of what we wanted our piece of wood to say. It had to be something deep. Something profound, something that would echo through the ages. Painstakingly plan out how we would write it. What font to use……..?

Actually, fuck all that. We sat on a log, drank a beer and carved something into the nearest piece of wood we found. Add some beach bling and tada….!

The fruit of our labors.

Take that back to the cabin and find the perfect spot to hang it.

Ahhhhh, perfect.

Just jokes Bella Star. :) This is the final spot.

Top billing of course.

A lot of you people reading this will never understand just how much the creative process can really drain a person. So after a long afternoon of searching/carving/writing, we car jacked the first (only) vehicle we found on the island and drove it back to the where we had the dinghy beached.

Hold mah Beer and watch this!

I don’t even feel bad about it.

Posted in Adventures, Big trips, Canada Trip, CB, Palarran | 12 Comments