Day 12 & 13:

It has been three days since I have been able to write about our trip. Some of these remote coves and inlets are “dark” for the internet, so I am writing this from an inlet on Kanish Bay called “Small Inlet”. During the last couple of days I have been able to load pictures onto this blog by waiting until we are underway and in a wide open body of water. I get a decent signal out there but then at night I do not.

It is Thursday October 1st, and tomorrow we are headed back to Campbell river for the night. Once again we will do laundry, provision for supplies for next week, and dine at the local pub that was so wonderful last week. The weather this week has been amazing with bright sunshine everyday. Tomorrow the wind is supposed to kick up a bit with a possible front coming through, but we will dock at Campbell River by 10:30am so it should not be an issue for us. We will pass through Seymour Narrows, where the passage needs to be timed carefully for slack tide, so we will depart no later than 7:30am from our remote mooring location. The current can flow at a rate as high as 12 knots through there, so if it is timed wrong you can find yourself going backward in a series of whirlpools and eddys.

On day 11 (Tuesday) we headed for Von Donup inlet, but some of the group boats needed water and fuel, so we stopped at a place called The Gorge around noon. It is a very narrow opening but leads to a wide harbor. The location is beautiful on a green grass hillside and has fuel, lodging, and a small store. We found some freshly grown greens for a salad and some ice. Our refrigerator performs well as a fridge but does not perform well as a freezer, so if we want ice, we need to buy it from a store or borrow from another boat, which has served us well this week. That night we again rafted up with everyone, and again we used our anchor. Before the trip Dianna was worried about anchoring successfully, but now with two days in a row under her belt, she is more than comfortable with it. That night we cooked on the grill, pork chops for me and steak for Dianna. We got slightly distracted cooking the mashed potatoes and making the salad, and then noticed the meat flaring up. Dianna went out and turned the meat, when she was startled to see one pork chop fall from the fork and hit the deck of the boat. The good news is it did not go overboard. The three second rule came into play, and back on the grill it went. We found a local wine that afternoon at The Gorge called “Rigamarole” so we tried that just to keep it “local”. It was pretty good despite the odd/humorous label.

I was reminded by Dianna that I did not add what we enjoyed for dinner on night 10. We had “breakfast for dinner”, with scrambled eggs, costco bacon, and some amazing cinnamon bread that we cooked under the broiler to get the toasting effect. Yum!

Yesterday was day 12 and we went through a very interesting piece of water called Hole in the Wall. It connects two different channels of water with a very small opening at the western end. It is another crossing that needs to be timed to slack water so we entered at 1pm. The rapids are visible even at slack tide, and you can feel the boat move with the currents. As we passed we saw a half dozen kayaks moving toward our direction waiting for the slack period to end so they can ride the waves. One of the reference books says the tide runs from 8 to 12 knots at peak, so that provides quite a ride for kayakers. We entered Octopus Island inlet where we rafted up for the night. We were told of a cabin close by that was build in the 1970’s, and was owned by a family for many years. No one is sure why it was abandoned but now it is the home of art made from driftwood. When you walk in, there is a hammer and other tools to create your own unique creation. Some of the pieces were clearly created over many hours, as they are elaborate in their design. I took pictures of many of them, but will only discuss a few here. The flotilla we are on stops there every year and adds the names of the boats on the trip. Someone from our group added the boat names for this year, and “Messing About” is listed. Another favorite of ours is Captain Octopus, comprised of a large piece of driftwood decorated with shells to represent the suction cups. The added hat makes it complete. One other favorite was a sign showing someone’s journey that started in Seattle including the following stops: San Francisco, San Diego, Puerto Vallarta, The Marquesa Islands, Tuamotus, Tahiti, Honolulu, Victoria, and finally to Octopus Island. What a great sounding trip. Then we found “Wilson” from the movie Castaway, very cool to see someone be so creative. We posed for pictures with Wilson. So fun! The late afternoon light was great for pictures. Last night we had a pot luck dinner at our house for the group of 18. Rigatoni was the main dish, but we had lots of other goodies: tomatoes with mozzarella and basil, garlic stuffed olives, and double creamed brie cheese with rosemary flat bread. I also made home made chocolate brownies with walnuts, in the oven. What a great smell the boat had after that. During the party everyone got to tell about how they met their spouse with details for the engagement. It was very interesting and got everyone to open up. Judy (of Joe and Judy) cooked the rigatoni and it was terrific! She was mixing it all together in our galley when she found our “hot hands” (pot holders). They are these cute little puppet like gloves that she and Dianna started to use as talking puppets. A very cute show began with impromptu comments by both of them. (Sorry I did not take photos.) It was so witty and clever! Lots of jolly people having fun! What a great evening.

This morning we witnessed some low clouds around the near mountains and a bit of overcast skies. We either needed to leave at 6:30am or noon, in order to make it through today’s rapids. After our evening of fun, we chose noon. Watching the boats in front of us slide sideways through the water that is swirling around is fun to witness. At one point we felt like we were surfing a wave, and you could feel the surge of power, and I looked down and we were traveling over 10 knots at a very low RPM rate. What fun to experience this part of the trip!

When we rounded Granite Point into Campbell River and headed toward Kanish Bay, we noticed that we had internet so I posted some pictures, but at the same moment we realized the wind was blowing 12 to 15 knots. We wrapped up the posting and put up our sails. The trip across the channel was a beam reach, so we went back and forth across the channel with great wind and a nice sail position. Along the way we saw a lot of logs floating in the area so it was time to concentrate on not hitting one of them. The usual damage from that is a broken rudder or prop damage. On one of our trips across the channel we saw two huge tugs pulling logs. The first was logs piled high, but the second was what we have become used to seeing out here, logs in a huge flat area (five acres?) that is are being pulled by a tug. They have the right of way because they are a commercial vessel, so we tacked often to avoid them. Heading into Small Cove the winds died down considerably, so it was easy to find our way through another narrow passage to our fellow flotilla mates.

The wind is coming up and tomorrow could get interesting, but it is only a short 2 ½ hour trip to Campbell River. I am off to cook dinner. It looks like chili and homemade cornbread with a salad or fresh greens from The Gorge.

Cheers from both of us!!

PS We are so wishing that Lisa (Dianna’s sister) and her husband Reece could have joined us for this week as originally was planned. It would have been so much fun……..rain check……