Big Trip to Canada Day 8 (CB)

CB 28 August, 2008
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Sunday July 19th:

We only stayed in Musket Cove for one day. We were anxious to get moving and get all the way up to Desolation Sound. Our plan was to leave early, stop in the town of Lund to reprovision and then continue on up to Tenedos Bay which is in Desolation Sound.

The trip north today was windless. Alot of motoring, we had a couple hours till we got to Lund and since we had been out for a little over a week we decided to take care of some laundry. Since we don’t have a washer/dryer on the boat, we did the laundry hillbilly style. Which is a bucket and plunger. :)

And with the laundry done, I put Tawn to work cleaning the decks….hahaha :)

With the chores done and the laundry drying we pulled into Lund and tied up the the outside of thier floating breakwater floats. The town of Lund was a pretty small place, but they had just about everything we needed. Beer being the main thing, wine second and fresh veggies a distant third….oh and some bacon.

The other reason we wanted to stop in Lund was due to the fact that the old Pan-American Highway (Highway 101) runs from here all the way down to the town of Puerto Montt, Chile. Which by the way is the town that me and Tawn are going down to next year on vacation and plan to move to after we finish sailing around the world. So we thought that would be a pretty cool thing. There is also a official sign/placard that states this fact. So we had to find this.

So before we went shopping we walked around for abit to find this…..how hard could it be? Right? Well, after looking everywhere and not seeing anything, we decided to ask someone…that someone told us that they took that sign down last summer……?? Dammit, but being determined tourist we managed to find this:

After getting our picture taken, garbage dropped off and stocked up on booze and Ice, we rowed back out to the boat and headed north toward Desolation Sound. Ghost and WindDancer decided to stay in Lund for the night. They would catch up with us tomorrow.

Still no wind so the rest of the day was motoring. As we passed the Copeland Islands we made plans to stop by here on the way back south in a few weeks.

Sarah Point is the point of land that that marks the entrance to Desolation Sound. The picture of course does not do it justice, but it’s nice to get a point of reference. The point of land in the right hand side of the picture is Sarah Point.

I’m not sure if we were just anticipating it so much or if it really was as awesome as it seemed, but as soon as we rounded the point the view somehow seemed to get even better. Huge mountains everywhere. Again, below is a picture that in no way does it justice:

We pulled into Tenedos Bay around 6:30pm. We had wanted to anchor and stern tie in the southeast corner of the bay, near the path that lead up to Lake Unwin. But all those spots were taken. So we headed to the other side of the bay in the Northeast side and dropped the hook and ran the sternline to shore. Our cozy little spot for the next couple days.

Being so far north the summer days are insanely long. Sunset is around 10:30 or so. So we went for a little dinghy exploring and a short hike on shore.

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Big Trip to Canada. Day 7 (CB)

CB 28 August, 2008
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Saturday July 19th Saturday:

I can’t remember now exactly what time the alarm went off, it was definetly before 6 am. Maybe even before 5am. Either way, it was early. But at least we didn’t have to haul up the anchor, washdown and stow the anchor chain and anchor bouy. We were tied to mooring ball, so all we had to do was untie a mooring line and take off.

Ghost and WindDancer were up and motoring towards Malibu rapids as we came up on deck and started getting things ready to go. They went around the north side of MacDonald Island, we went around the South side. Through the rapids with ease and out into Queens Reach. Unfortunatly, there was absolutly no wind. So we had to motor most of the way. As we got to Nelson Island the winds picked up a little and we put the sails up for the last 10 miles of the trip. Ghost and WindDancer motored on and soon turned the corner around the island and out of site.

Our destination for today was a small cove on Hardy Island called Musket Cove. The entrance was nice and deep and well marked, as long as you were actually in the main channel and did’nt get suckered in to taking what appears to be a shortcut. Ghost was anchored and running there Stern line to shore as we entered the bay. WindDancer was doing the same.

Stern tieing is an anchoring technique used alot up here in BC. The main reason it is used so much is that alot of the anchorages up here are small little coves with very steep shores. If some one was to anchor regularly you could only get 2-3 boats in a small cove. If everyone stern ties, you could get 15 or more boats in the same cove. The reason is since your boat is tied to shore you cannot swing on your anchor. You stay in the same position no matter what the wind or tide is doing.

This would be our first time stern tieing.  And to be honest, I had sorta been worrying about it. Palarran is a full keeled boat, which means that she does not like to back up. Not without a fight, so I had imagined all sorts of crazy ass scenerios unfolding as I tried to keep the boat in one spot as Tawn took the stern line to shore. None of which happened.

I’ll try to explain the operation as best as I can.

Once we entered Musket cove we drifted for abit, getting everything ready to go. Get the anchor setup, get the engine on the dinghy, get the sternline untied and ready to hand overboard to Tawn. Once all that is set, we motored around the Anchorage looking for a good spot to anchor. We found one in the Northwest corner of the cove. I motored the boat up as close as I dared to the shore, depth sounder showed 18 feet, I spun the boat around and headed about 100 feet out from shore and Tawn dropped the anchor in 35 feet of water. As soon as Tawn tells me there is enough anchor chain out and the anchor is on the bottom, I put the engine in reverse and start backing up, towards the shore. Tawn is letting out more chain as we do this. When about 90 feet of  chain is out, Tawn stopped letting out the chain and we let the anchor dig in. This is the normal technique and we do it all the time.

Now comes the new bit. Running the stern line to shore and back. Once the anchor is set, Tawn jumps in the dinghy and I hand here one end of the stern line. The other end is wrapped around a big spool I built and mounted on the back of the boat. As Tawn is headed to shore, I’m paying out more and more line (we have 600ft total on the spool). Once she gets to shore, she climbs up and finds a tree and runs the rope around it. As she is doing this, I am on the boat, keeping it in place or making sure we dont drift into other boats or rocks on shore. She then pulls as much line as she thinks she needs to get back to the boat, where she hands me the line and I tie it off to the boat. We pull the line tight and that is about it. We are now anchored in a little corner of the bay and tied off to shore.

I of course took a few pictures of the final result. This first picture was taken right off the back of the boat. You can see the blue line running to shore, around the tree and back to the boat.

This next picture shows just how close to shore we were anchored and the blue line running to shore and back. But it showes that you can really tuck your boat into some very small spots and tie you self in and out of some nasty weather.

Once settled in we did a little dinghy exploring. Scotty lost an oar and we found a bunch of oysters.

Map of the trip.

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Big Trip to Canada. Days 4 – 6 (CB)

CB 28 August, 2008
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Wednesday – Friday July 16th – 18th:

The next couple days were spent either hanging out on the boats relaxing, hiking and exploring on shore, or swimming and exploring the Inlet by dinghy.

A very good portion of the first of those next couple days was actually spent in the hammock. After 3 days of getting up early and covering sorta long distances it felt good to do very little but drink some cold beers and lay in the hammock or dive overboard for a swim then back up in the hammock.

One of the things we wanted to do here was to hike up to the “Trapper’s Cabin”. All the guide books say that to hike up to this cabin is a suicide 3 hour one way mission up hill fighting bears the whole way. Me and Tawn say bullshit! So did scotty. The main reason we called bullshit was due to the fact that most of the “Cruising Guidebooks” are written by old people that don’t hike much past the docks. The rest of the information in the books are spot on, but when it comes to stuff like the condition of a hiking trail, I’m not going to heed the warnings of someone that is worried about breaking a hip.

So…off we went. Granted the hike was strenous, doubly so since we had spent the last 3 days sitting on a boat. But we made it up there in less than an hour and a half. And what did we get as a reward:

Basically an old pile of logs. You could make out the rough outline of a the old cabin, but it’s been here since the 1920s or 30s, so I guess it’s in pretty good shape considering. It was still pretty cool the have made the hike and check it out. Plus right next to the cabin was an awesome waterfall with a very cool view of the whole inlet about 2000 feet below.

You can just feel the excitement of seeing that cabin in the expression on my face.

But the waterfall and view of the inlet more than made up for it. While Scotty, Tawn and myself were hiking up to the Trapper’s Cabin, Angie, Curtis, Cynthia and the Kids all took a dinghy ride back up the the entrance of Princess Louisa Inlet to the Lodge that sits right at the Malibu Rapids. The lodge is a Christian Summer camp and they will give you tours of the place if you show up. Those religous folks are so nice!

The lodge was actually started as a very fancy retreat for hollywood stars way back in the 1940s, but it’s a Jebus camp now.

You can just make out the Lodge way off in the distance in the picture below we took from the falls:

As unbelievable as it seems, the water tempatures here are actually up near the 70 degree mark. So we did a lot of swimming. Which is not something we can do off the boat back home, not without risking hypothermia at least. It was pretty nice to be able to just dive of the boat into the water or take the dinghy to a giant cliff and climb up and then jump off into warm water.

All things considered, Princess Louisa was probably our favorite spot on the whole trip. The rest was awesome, but Princess Louisa Inlet really topped them all.

On one of the nights Tawn, Scotty, Curtis and Myself jumped in two dinghies, tied them togather, tossed in a couple bottles of scotch and drifted down the bay telling stories and jokes as the current pulled us towards the rapids. We were’nt moving very fast of course and we just hungout watching the moon, which was full and very bright light up the inlet by reflecting off the granite cliffs on the North side of the inlet. We could not see the moon it’self because of the mountains to the south of us. What a cool night.

And as hard as it was to leave, we still wanted to see all the other places north, so we planned on leaving on Saturday morning. Early, since we had to time the tides once again to be able to get through Malibu Rapids again. Curtis had the idea to pull up anchor and move the boats a few miles closer to the rapids so we didn’t have to get up as early and could sleep in at least alittle longer. So Friday afternoon we all pulled up the anchor and moved down to McDonald Island and grabbed a Mooring ball for the night.

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Big Trip to Canada. Day 3 (CB)

CB 21 August, 2008
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Tuesday July 15th:

Map to the trip is here. The route today is outlined in green.

Ok, today is the day that the “vacation” actually felt like it started. The previous two days were travel days and felt like we were on a mission to get somewhere. Now that we made it, we could slow down and enjoy the sights.

And man, what sights!!

The day started off, with us following Ghost out of Pender Harbor. Winddancer would follow about an hour or so later, as they were going to fill up their fresh water tanks. We motored out of of Pender Harbor and turn north to head up Agamemnon Channel a couple minutes later the wind picked up and we were engines off and sailing.

As we approached Earls Cove there were some ancient Pietraglyphs (sp?) that were painted on the cliffs thousands of years ago and still visible. We could see them with our binoculars, but could not get a good picture with our camera.

As we were sailing toward Princess Louisa Inlet the wind would follow us around the ‘corners’. If you look on the map of the trip, you can see that the route up is a zigzag of four reaches. Everytime we would come to a new reach, we thought the wind would either die or change directions for the worse on us. But at each turn, the wind would simply follow us around the corner. Or we would flow with it, depending on how you look at it. The distance length wise of these 4 reaches is around 35 miles, but only a mile wide on average. The mountains drop straight down into the water. At one point we sailed right up to the cliff. Or at least within 20 feet of the side of the cliff and the depth sounder was reading over 600 feet of water!! And the cliff shot up another 3,000 feet or more. Unbelievable!! I could almost reach out and touch the wall as we sailed by before we gybed out again. I didn’t think to take a picture straight up.

Actually, none of the picture actually do any sort of justice, but we tried. This pic was taken about a mile or two after we sailed up to the cliff:

The rest of the day only got better. The winds got better and stayed on our stern and built to 20 knots. Just an awesome sail! As we rounded Patrick Point the wind just died. Completly. So we dropped the sails and motored the last mile or two to the begining of Malibu Rapids.

Malibu Rapid is the entrance to Princess Louisa Inlet (follow the link and read the wiki article if you want more info on the inlet) is known and named for the rapids that form when the tides change and all that water is trying to either get in or get out of the inlet. People actually white water kayak on the rapids that form here. No way in hell you could take a sailboat through here, unless you time it just right (Scotty ;P) and go through at just the right time. Which we did.

The entrance is only wide enough for one boat to pass at a time. So you have to make a call on the radio to signal your intent to enter and go for it. It is sorta dog legged, so you can see all the way through. Once through though, the scenery is unbelievably more impressive than that of the incredible views we had all day on the way up.

This picture makes it look like there is a lot of room, but just below the surface of the water are huge boulders and the shore that you have to follow a small channel through. You can see Ghost behind us winding thier way in.

The mountains are just as high as the reaches we had been sailing up all day, and drop straight down to the water, but the width of the inlet is 1/4 or less, so the effect is magnified. It’s like being in the bottom of a canyon. And to top it off, at the end of the inlet is Chatterbox Falls.

And where did we anchor?

I Love this next picture:

Anchoring there was crazy, we motored right up to the shore. Maybe 20 feet from it, and dropped the anchor in about 25 feet of water. Let out 100 feet of anchor chain and the water flowing out from the falls held us off the shore and pointed just like the picture showes for the 3 days we stayed there.

**{I’ve got a cool video we took of us motoring up to the shore and dropping the anchor. I plan to upload it tonight after work}**

Ok, so the video below is about 5 minutes long and not very exciting. But we started recording as we slowly motored in towards the shore. The camera was mounted on the bowsprite of the boat. The boat you see off to the right is our friends boat WindDancer. When the camera starts shaking and all the rattling is Tawn dropping the anchor and chain overboard.

I’m going to just stop even trying to discribe how incredible the scenery here is.

Stay tuned, tomorrow we actually go to shore and walk!!!

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