Sails Up. Pot Sinks.

Downtown Shearwater's cool "United in History" Mural

Day Ten:  Anchored off Shearwater, Denny Island 7 a.m. Fat raindrops pelt the cabin.  Best sound in the world when you can snuggle in, harder when you need to get underway.

Clad in foul-weather gear, we dinghy over to Shearwater Marina, hit the grocery, and make our rounds in the steady downpour. It’s great to be back in Shearwater, Denny Island’s tiny, always interesting boating community.  (During WWII, the hangar housed the Canadian Airforce’s seaplane fleet.)  The ladies in the tiny grocery tell me how grateful they are for the rain, how eerie it was last month when it hadn’t rained for three weeks straight. 

Next to the laundromat, we meet Jay in the new gift shop. (A former boat captain, he tells us about crossing to Haida Gwaii (no sweat), and how the planes based here in WWII were used for reconnaissance.  He also has a great display of local resident Ian McAllister’s books, including autographed editions of the latest, “Great Bear Wild:  Dispatches from a Northern Rainforest,” which is stunning.  By the time we’ve finished our chat, the rain has stopped and, miraculously, sun is actually breaking through clouds.  

Hello humpbacks!

Decks drying out, steaming in the sun...  yay!

We make a beeline out Seaforth Channel, round Ivory Island Light, and nose into  Milbanke Sound where the water and sky open wide, and where, for the first time in 10 days we find enough room and wind – an easy 12-knot westerly – to raise the main and even the jib.  It’s a beautiful sail, steam rising from the decks as they dry in the sun.  Instead of heading to Klemtu, we anchor in Bottleneck Inlet, a small passageway that opens to a gorgeous wilderness anchorage with bald eagles, seals, loons, and flocks of tiny bright white terns.  There’s a southeasterly forecast, but Bottleneck feels like a bombproof anchorage with water so dark and still it shines spruce green reflecting the trees. Jeff dinghies out to set the crab pot in what feels like a goldmine of Dungeness.  (After all, Khutze Bay, where we once pulled up 27 crabs one night is just around the corner.) It’s a gorgeous night, warm enough for rum and tonics and dinner out in the cockpit, yay!

Sailing up Milbanke Sound

Beautiful evening anchored in Bottleneck Inlet

Tragedy Strikes. 

But then, the unthinkable happens:  Jeff goes to check the crab pot, which he’s dropped in about 65 feet of water and pulling it up, finds….  Nothing! Not even the pot! The end of the line comes up dripping, surely one of the saddest, loneliest sights ever:  the moment when you realize you're miles from anywhere, it's taken you weeks to get there, and your only crab pot has slid to a sad, watery grave.

Evidently the new line we’d bought, a hundred feet of bright yellow nylon, doesn’t want to lay right and, sickeningly, uncoiled itself out of a bowline, leaving us stranded in the Holy Grail of Dungeness Crab Country on the first night of the best crabbing of the whole trip. 

“I bet we can pick up another pot in the Queen Charlottes, ” I venture.

But Jeff is bereft; he simply cannot believe it. 

Losing our crab pot feels ominous, somehow, like the worst possible sign.  We sleep heavily and wake to steady rain...

One of Those Days, or Two

Returning to the boat always comes as a surprise, no matter how many weeks we’ve had to prepare for it. This time, Heron lost shore power during our absence. Steve Jackman, dockmaster extraordinaire at Port McNeill’s North Island Marina, and his wife Jessica, heroically rescued all our chilled provisions in time – including six-weeks-worth of frozen food – hauling about 50 pounds of wrapped meats off the boat to their own deep freeze. 

We learned from Steve upon our return that an eagle had landed on a transformer -- not only frying himself but knocking out power to the entire dock, making an exciting week for both Steve and the ill-fated eagle.  Of course every other boat’s power cycled right back on.  Every other boat, that is, except Heron.  Once her power was tripped, Mighty Heron, quirky British dame that she is, didn't feel like cooperating. 

Fortunately, engineer Paul LaRussa, who often troubleshoots Heron’s tricky systems in Seattle happened to be on Vancouver Island working on another boat.  He drove up from Campbell River, identified the problem within 15 minutes (a pair of hidden breakers that only a Moody’s makers would put behind the instrument panel), and hit the road. 

Welcome Home.

Returning to the dock a week after all this excitement, we repacked all the frozen provisions and now extremely ripe month-old cheeses in the fridge, then hauled our sheets and towels up to the Laundromat.  Since it was “BC Day” in British Columbia, pretty much everything in Port McNeill was closed – the diner, the café, the liquor store.  Thankfully the market and pub were open.  We restocked our fresh produce and collected enough Loonies for the dryers.

But there were more surprises!

At the end of our chilly motor across Queen Charlotte Strait, the swells picked up and we hit a massive side swell just as we were tucking into the night’s planned anchorage, one of our favorites:  Skull Cove.  The swell sent everything in the cabin that wasn’t secured sailing across the main salon – including the big storage bin under the settee.  It came flying out, exploded completely off its hinges, and landed squarely in the middle of the floor.  Hmmm...

After anchoring we unpacked everything out of the drawer (most of our pantry), removed the screws from the drawer, disassembled it, screwed it back together (going so far as to glue the screws in this time), and slid it back in.  No dice.  The impact of a single monster side-swell had busted the tracks.

Captain Jeff gets out the tool kit...

Big Drawer, No More. Luckily, the Moody 54 has many secret holds and compartments and we weren’t expecting any guests for this remote and rainy part of the trip.  We squirreled away all our nuts, dried fruits, cookies, and boxes of crackers in the forward stateroom’s closet shelves, turning it into a walk-in kitchen pantry.

Settling into a beautiful evening at Skull Cove, we realized we were in an extraordinarily wild and beautiful place, and that it was all worth it.  It turned out to be a perfectly still, high-tide evening punctuated by a resounding chorus of birds going bonkers  - including many breeding pairs of loons so loud they sounded like dogs barking on the water.  We sat in the cockpit, incredulous, listening to the night.

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James and Laura Aboard!

James and Laura helped us move Heron from Cortes Island to Port McNeill in late July.  It was hot and sunny when they landed in at Cortes...

But alas, big B.C. rains set in the next day.  James and Laura proved to be not only brave but game, as the (much-needed) rain continued for the NEXT TWO DAYS straight...

We were rewarded in the end, however, by one of the most memorable evenings any of us have ever spent aboard Heron.  After pounding our way up Johnstone Strait, we motored into the Broughton Islands, which in the early evening light were all misty and silvered.  Then Laura said, "Is that a whale?"

And sure enough, it was...

Then we all witnessed a remarkable thing: a group of Humpbacks 'bubble-net feeding,' working in tandem to drive a school of herring together before scooping them up in a big coordinated whale-feast, so to speak.  We don't have pics of the whales circling round then rising up out of the water, unfortunately.  But the water, boiling with birds and bald eagles swooping in for the banquet looked magical.  Like this...

After a cozy dinner and evening spent anchored in Spout Cove, we woke the next morning to bluebird skies. James and Laura took the helm while Jeff worked on the Macerator (and Sam texted his encouragement from NYC:  "it's not a Heron trip w/out a Macerator adventure").  We tied up in Port McNeill just in time for the float plane ride home.