After flying back to Vancouver from Bella Bella the family continued on with its fishing theme and took a long weekend trip up to the Bonaparte Provincial Park and the Skitchine trout fly-fishing lodge. It is always lovely up there. Greg had been many times, but for everyone else Skitchine was a new adventure. Lines were taught and many trout were caught and released. Gourmet meals were eaten at the lodge dining table. The weather was warm. Bliss.
After so much quality family time, Alice and Greg felt a little sad to be taking a flight back to the boat, which for two weeks had been tied up to the dock at Shearwater. The provisioning options at the Kitasoo Waglisa store were a little sparser than expected. The veggies were wilted and it being “free dairy products and bread day” there was no cream to be found, which in our household amounts to a morning brew disaster. Black coffee until Klemtu, sigh. Getting ready to head out was otherwise a well-trodden path: a quick systems check, start the refrigerator, top up the tanks and go. The freezer had been left running and was already well stocked. On the day after flying in, Oliver Cove at Cecelia Island was our first stop: another gorgeous anchorage all to ourselves.
Our trip plans were a little loose. After downloading the weather forecast on the satellite system, Alice persuaded Greg that our best option was to suffer some 50 extra miles and take a detour to Fiordland, which provides isolated rugged beauty and also the possibility of seeing wild bears. On this part of the coast there are grizzly, black and spirit bears. Spirit bears are albino variants of the west-coast black bear and are sufficiently rare that even the possibility of seeing them is a special thrill.
The detour meant an 8 hour day in transit, but after motoring through Perceval Narrows and entering Mathieson Channel, the downwind sail to Kynoch Inlet was stunning, sunny and fast. The water at this time of year is emerald green from the glacial runoff and mountains rise steeply on both sides of the channel. Cascading waterfalls empty into the sea. As we approached the head of the inlet Alice spied the shore with the binoculars and was delighted to see three grizzly bears foraging on the river marshlands. A mother and two growing yearlings were busy turning over rocks and digging for cabbage. We anchored while watching the bears and after a couple of hours the tide rose up and chased them off the beach. We were waiting for the high slack which would allow us to enter the narrow and intimidating reversing-river channel that provides access to Culpepper Lagoon.
After cooking burgers on the BBQ the white water that was flowing in the channel had subsided enough that we figured we could pass through - dead slow and keeping a close lookout. The reward for the difficult entry into Culpepper Lagoon is that it is described as one of the most beautiful places on the BC coast; the people who say this do not lie. At the head of the inlet a high granite plateau patched with snow slopes down to the sea. In the valley a river meets the sea in a meadow of tidal eel-grass. We launched the kayaks and paddled through a winding passage in the estuarial grass that is only navigable at high-tide. We very much enjoyed the warm evening and paddle, but looked in vain for the fabled spirit bear.
The morning tide to take us back through the channel was at 0800, so we hoisted anchor at 0715 and headed back to the entrance channel, arriving to almost perfectly slack water. Returning though an patch of water is always easier on the second pass. Next stop on our spirit bear quest was Poison Bay at the head of Mussel Inlet. It was so named because one of Captain George Vancouver’s crew died there from paralytic shellfish poisoning after eating red-tide tainted mussels. Overnight anchoring there is strongly discouraged, not to mention that ravenous horse-flies began feasting on the delicacy of human flesh. Also there were no bears. Bears apparently show up in large groupings during salmon spawning season, but July is not that time.
On the morning trip northward to Mussel Inlet we had sailed downwind, but on the way southwards towards Klemtu it was 20 knots on the nose and a boring motorsail. In a little nook created by an outcropping island we escaped the wind for the night in Windy Bay.
At Klemtu the next day we at last replenished our supply of cream. The Band Store there is well stocked but as our boat was already crammed full of food stuffs, we needed little beyond our missing coffee flavouring. As we arrived in the store we were immediately greeted by the affable and amusing George Robinson, who informed us that his name was in the Waggoner Guide Book (widely used by west coast cruisers) and offered us a tour of the village Big House. When we walked to the other end of the village to meet him he was already there, dressed in a spirit bear poncho and woven cedar hat. The tour was a little disappointing as the museum was crammed full of boxes of heating and ventilating equipment waiting to be installed. Also, he didn’t have a key for the main part of the building that day. Realizing that George was extremely nice (if disorganized and perhaps freelancing) we paid him our fee and accepted that we would be missing seeing the inside. The truth was he did provide a legitimate hour of amusing entertainment in the form of a non-stop rambling, free-association discourse. This included a complete family history with many interesting nuggets on the cultural traditions of his people; also he told a story about a visit by his two-years dead mother who came to the very place we were standing in the guise of a spirit bear.
Enroute to our Hecate Strait crossing we enjoyed three more calm weather and lovely remote anchorages at Meyers Passage, Smithers Island and Gillen Harbour. At Smithers Island we caught and released a few ling cod, keeping only one for a rather nice dinner meal at Gillen Harbour, which was our last anchorage the night before our start of the Hecate Strait crossing. While we remained hopeful for a chance of sighting a spirit bear, as we exited their known area of habitation we accepted the lesson that spirits when looked for are rarely seen.
As we motored out of Gillen Harbour there was barely enough light to see. Flat calm describes the first few hours of our day, followed by light air from directly astern. A third of the way across a decent sailing breeze (if a rainy one) developed and we were able to shut off the engine, gybing from time to time as the wind remained directly from behind. The oddest thing was that the islands ahead remained completely shrouded in mist, hidden though we knew they were there. Approaching the shore only 2 miles away the land remained invisible.
To gain safe water we had to cross over shallow banks, and the wind had by now piped up to 20-25 knots, so the seas were getting lively. The channel that leads into Skidegate Inlet is a narrow one and once entered you need to turn hard left and follow the defined path southward. This meant for us a turn that brought us hard to weather in lumpy seas that were breaking over the bow. Our choices were Sandspit, requiring more hard tacking to weather with wet spray in our faces or Daajing Giids, (the new name for Queen Charlotte City) requiring a turn to the right and the easing of our sails to a downwind course. Who wants hard when you can have easy? At 2030 we tied up to an empty section of dock on the fisheries wharf and walked up the ramp. The Blacktail Restaurant was just closing their kitchen but the chef kindly offered to cook us a delicious mushroom pasta. Beers for Greg and cocktails for Alice.
The northern-most point of our summer cruise having been attained, it will now be southward from here, passing through the famous islands of the Haida Nation.
Fiordland Paradise
George Robinson, our tour guide in Klemtu.
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