An unintelligible din bursts from the intercom speakers then dies with a strange strangled gurgling noise. All the stranded passengers look quizzically at each other. We’re stuck at Port Hardy airport. There’s a light drizzle here and low cloud. The weather in Bella Bella is below landing minimums. We’re stuck here until it lifts. We all endure random explosions of babbled gibberish from the airport speakers. Every edifice has one, that ubiquitous someone who loves to hear themselves while trying to find empowerment over a captive audience, There is no cafe, no well-stocked vending machines, no wifi. It’s miles into town. We’re supposed to just sit and wait…and wait. The weather was sunny and warm at the YVR airport, in Richmond, a little over an hour ago. I’d rather be here.
After a long time in the isolation of Shearwater, everything in the city was too much for me. Our expensive hotel room was grim. (Nothing like a non-smoking room that reeks of cigarettes)The traffic and dirt and noise outside seemed overwhelming. We were some of the few Caucasian faces anywhere as we wandered an urban nightmare of concrete, steel, glass and racket. Richmond is not a pleasant place and everywhere there is more construction. Office towers, high-rise condos, even more shopping spaces are shooting up on every available patch of land. The streets are clogged with traffic. Overhead skytrains squeal and rumble while an endless stream of aircraft descend and depart nose to tail. It is hell. But, the food is good. Asian restaurants are prolific and their fabulous aromas fill the air with erotic enticements. We ate, and ate, then walked by a Chinese sex toy shop called the “Harmony Store.” What fun! How about “Wonton Whoopee?”
That’s all in the memory bank now. Jill and I are finally aboard ‘Seafire’ in Shearwater. It is cold and raining and we are spending the evening lurking in the warmth and solitude of this old boat. A friend has dropped by to donate some fresh salmon and say goodbye. July 1st celebrations continue ashore somewhere and somehow. We’ll stay here for the night.
In the morning the low cloud and intermittent drizzle persist. After another round of hugs and backslaps, we’ve fuelled up and finally Shearwater disappears behind us. I flush the mud of the place from my scuppers and have no intention of ever going back. Well, certainly not to work there. We amble and meander through some beautiful country, new to both of us, inching our way through places with names like Lady Trutch Passage and Jackson Narrows to finally drop the hook in Clothes Bay, a beautiful anchorage just a short distance from Klemtu, a little over six hours from Shearwater, now a world away. We’ve travelled northwest, further into the Great Bear Rainforest but we now have clear Marine VHF Radio and intelligible marine weather reports. And, wonder of wonders, Klemtu has connections to a commercial radio station, CFNR “Your Nation, Your Station” from Prince Rupert. Some of the music doesn’t suit my tastes, but it is so very refreshing to have an option to CB bloody C. The rain patters down and we tuck into our gift of salmon. Bliss.
Klemtu. Main street.
Say no more.
In the morning the rain still pisses and splatters and dribbles with waves of mist between the downpours. I persuaded Jill to come here and I ache to go further, right to the end of some of the inlets where bears parade in legislated protected innocence of the threat of man. Great portions of the rainforest here have been set aside as official untouchable wilderness. Finally we are getting the ideas of protecting samples of the natural planet from ourselves.
Klemtu Harbour.
That’s it!
This stream, where the salmon still come to spawn, may well be the reason a community developed here. There is now a salmon hatchery up this stream.
Klemtu’s first and last vision.
Walking around the village we are both disheartened by an air of melancholy and decay. There are hardly any folks about, Despite toys abandoned in ditches, we see only two children. Some folks drive vehicles which run poorly and have no mufflers. They pass us every five minutes. I wonder if that goes on all day. Folks we meet are friendly. A few dogs we meet greet us with a chorus of howling then return to their somnolent posts. Sadly, Klemtu makes Bella Bella seem like a thriving metropolis. I try to imagine life here through a rain forest winter and cannot. Even the newest buildings seem dilapidated. Weather-proof vinyl siding on the houses is coated with years green grunge. The swirling clouds and incessant precipitation persuade me to turn south, the forecast is, after all, for westerly winds and that promises some good sailing. However a stout breeze rises from the sou’west, right on the nose. We finally motor into Moss Passage to escape the mounting potential wrath of Milbanke Sound. I know this place all too well from my tugboating days. I drop the hook sheltered by the Roar Islets, behind Ivory Island, and hope the forecast for Westerly winds is true for the morning.
The wind is cool, but the sunlight is glorious. We savour the afternoon and evening in this snug anchorage which we have all to ourselves. At ten pm it is still light enough to read without a light. A sailboat picks it’s way into the anchorage from Seaforth Channel. The wind has died, it is flat calm here. Outside the islets, the swells burst on the reefs. I now know why they are called “roar.” Tomorrow we cross our Northward loop of meandering and truly begin the voyage home to our little town on the 49th parallel. That is only 240 nautical miles of latitude southward, but we will traverse at least five hundred miles along the ragged coastline.
“Only Sea Meeting Sky.
In the west…sets a round, full sun. In the east…rises a round, full moon.
What is here in the full middle that thoughts cannot understand?
What are thoughts that they cannot dispel awe in the heart….. Between the fullness of everything, there is a special something that thoughts cannot quite remember, that the heart cannot quite forget.”
Ray Grigg, The Tao Of Sailing
