Classical Spanish guitar music plays softy beneath the patter of rain. The oil lantern lends a gentle warmth to the after-dinner ambiance. I sit alone, pleasantly overfull. Now there are some sea-salt chocolate cashews with mint tea for desert as I write. Yes, rain I said! What a blessed thing. I don’t know if this means the mid-coast drought has broken but it truly feels wonderful to be back in the dripping rainforest I’ve know for so many years. Tonight I’m in Raven Cove and tomorrow I’ll fish my way home. Hopefully my virgin fishing rod will bring me luck.
Your love is like a lantern in the night. HUH? Clearly, a life alone has its price. This is the beloved oil lamp in the main cabin of ‘Seafire.’Raven Cove, rainy eveningDawnFlooding tide, Raven Cove. Time to weigh anchor
My favourite camera lense has died and so I’m going to let this blog to simply be a photo-filled post with captions. God knows there are plenty on file. So far my time here has been a wonderful and endless photo opportunity. It is very frustrating to feel that one can never quite convey the sense of this incredible area to my readers, but it is certainly a worthy pursuit to continue. Wish you were here.
“Goin’ to the vet? Hope you’re not gonna get get tutored.” Along the walk from the dock to the hospital/clinic in Bella Bella.The Bella Bella “Cop Shop,” across the street from the little hospital. After a medical appointment I had hours to kill before the pharmacy opened. It was time well spent. I went off to visit the Heiltsuk Cultural Education Center located inside a lovely high schoolAlong the way, Bella Bella’s many ravens marked and announced my progress
The following short amateur video illustrates one of many raven calls. I was being severely admonished for coming too close to the berry feast where this character had been gorging himself .
The High School gymnasium doorThe RulesOn the way to the principal’s officeThat’s easy for you to say!How’s this for mixed messages?Beautiful heat. A gorgeous stove in the Koeye CaféWhale hinges!Nobody home. An abandoned beach house in Bella Bella.“Oie!” said the vicar’s wife.” Look at the pecker on that one!”“Who! Me?”Dryad Point Light Station and Bella Bella to the south in Lamma Pass.Impressive in clear light, these Alaska line barges can come out of the fog rapidly and deserve a wide respect. This is how Alaska receives most of its goods. Note the trucks on top of the load.Some westbound commercial traffic in Seaforth ChannelCanadian Coast Guard Vessel ‘Bartlett’ delivering supplies to the Ivory Island light station. Note the whaler, or tender, alongside.Ivory Island Light Station marking the corner of Seaforth Channel and Milbanke Sound. Its light is a reassuring sight on a stormy day heading in from the sound.Bonsai burial Islet, Blair Inlet, behind Ivory IslandHow about a burial islet with a sarcophagus?The Shaman RockThe Roaring Islets. Ivory Island. Open ocean beyond, just Haida Gwaii in the distance.I’m watching you! A poor grabshot of an active eagle’s nest in Blair InletOld School. Now a rare sight, this traditional trawler/gillnetter is eastbound out of Milbanke Sound.‘Northern Expedition’ The new BC Ferry northbound fro Prince RupertAlaska State Ferry ‘Columbia’ northbound for AlaskaIvory Island astern, fishing my way home under sail. Bliss!Damned fish! My new rod and real are no longer virgins. I had to defrost my little freezer to make room for all that salmon.Damned good fish! Fish ‘n rice, what poor people eat. Bugga!The pounder. Some folks are built for speed, I’m more for comfort.See what I mean?It never ends, there’s always another picture.
“ If a man is to be obsessed by something, I suppose a boat is as good as anything, perhaps a bit better than most.” … E.B.White
One Last Look Back Lewis Channel at dawn, the magic light of the coast
I’m settling into my new life in Shearwater. There are some enigmas to sort through. It’s interesting how wilfully coming to a semi-remote location magnifies our dependence on modern technology. A marginal, overloaded internet system leaves me in absolute frustration trying to communicate with the outside world and while posting my blogs. The computer is determined to crash and burn and none of my red-neck vocabulary helps at all. My mobile phone works marginally and at the moment I have also been blessed with some many-tentacled virus which is insidious. It snot funny but it will pass. I may have brought it up from the south with me. I hope I don’t start an epidemic. One of the few pleasures of getting older is knowing that nothing is forever. Yet there is also value in tenacity. While I recently heard hope described as the ultimate human torture, it prolongs suffering; I have also been inspired by the ship’s spider.
Town center, a thing of wonderful beauty
While travelling up Fitz Hugh Sound, I polished the metal work on the boat and discovered a spider sitting in the middle of its web beneath the bowsprit. Despite all the plunging and dunkings it endured in Queen Charlotte Strait the wee beast has endured. I’ve named him the Baptist. This superstitious sailor believes a ship’s spider is a good omen and so I wish him well.
The Raven and the Eagle, Bella Bella totem
The area is pristine, immense, wild and free. So are many of the people drawn here. Some are aberrant personalities and where I fit into the complex culture here is yet a bit dubious.
The Raven and The Eagle, Waglisla
Those dark waters seem to swirl and back-eddy daily. For the time being I remain the new hermit cautiously settling in to life on a rickety dock nestling at the edge of a small industrial slash in the mid-coast jungle. My welcome in the engine shop was a large jar of Vasoline set on top of my tool box. Redneck scatological humour, I can relate to that easily enoughand iff you don’t get it, there’s no point in me trying to explain. The available internet here is, to say the least, terrible. There are some cockamamie excuses about life in a remote location. But by my experience, this place is neither remote nor off the grid. It is 2015 and I know what is available in truly remote locations. Nevertheless there is a good solution soon available, and one of the joys of living on a boat is being able to untie and bugger off. That option sustains me.
A Guardian. One of many.See! Here are ten.The ‘Chilcotin Princess’ a former coastal trader in these waters. Fortunately I grabbed this photo only a few days before she was towed off to the breaker’s yard in Prince Rupert
After two weeks I already have plenty of anecdotes and observations about the area and its characters, its history, its culture. For this blog however, I am simply posting photographs with captions. Hopefully I can convey my sense of wonder for this place and how this adventure becomes part of my journey to a life in Mexico or points south. I realized recently that the legend on the boat’s dipstick is in Spanish.
Yep! It’s a panga! Built in Florida, registered in Montana, fishing in Shearwater.
To my great wonder one of the first boats I saw as I entered Kliktsoatli Harbour, where Shearwater is located, was a beautiful Panga. Some local folks have sailed their boat from here to Ensenada, Baha in seventeen days. So, I can lay out a rhum line southward and then turn left when the butter goes soft. Meanwhile I’m a bilge ape again for the time being, like it or not. Hi ho, hi ho, it’s down into the bilge I go.
Edgar the Eagle, mascot of Shearwater
The dreaded wheel barnacleIn many backwaters here, there are abandoned boats in various states of natural recycling. If only they could talk!Donkey CoveDryad Point Light Station, a mid-coast landmarkKakushdish Harbour sunsetInto the jungle from the beachThe cannery, old Bella BellaSeafire at the Shearwater “Hobo” dockA very high tide a day’s endSnoop, a passing marinerThe Bosun’s mate, Snoop’s fellow deckhandShearwater sunset, Edgar’s perch.
Each day as I trudge to work I look ruefully toward the mountains in all directions. I ache to explore the inlets winding among them. On calm mornings, I swear that, faintly, I can hear the boom of surf on the outer islands only a few miles away. My fate lies out there. I am impatient. And nearly always, from somewhere, there is the call of eagles.
“ The way of water is special. That which changes cannot be lost. That which yields cannot Be broken. That which breaks cannot be destroyed.
