Blue Skies and Grey Clouds
They say a photo is worth a thousand words, and this one surely tells the story of our weather this year. We sail from one atmospheric condition to the other. Blue to Grey and Grey to Blue.
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We are finally on our way to circumnavigate Vancouver Island. After returning to Canoe Cove Marina for the second time, all systems on the boat are now working. We have been traveling north for a day and a half, stopping for the night at the very familiar Montague Harbor and then heading across the Strait of Georgia to Pender Harbor.
A popular and much photographed spot called Chatterbox Falls is our next destination. By coincidence, The First Mate is reading a book sent her by veteran sailor and Telluride friend, Lou Fanning. “The Curve of Time” by M. Wylie Blanchet is a memoir of the summers she, alone with her five young children and sometimes a dog, spent cruising the waters of the Pacific Northwest in the 1930’s and 40’s. Their water home was a 25-foot motor vessel with a beam of 6 1/2’. (Avante in comparison is 52 feet with a beam of 14 ½ feet.) The family explored this coast at a time when little was known of it and much has changed since. They caught fish easily (fewer fish now) and cooked them over fires on the beach (prohibited in many places now). They would favor a spot and spend 2 weeks there with no other visiting vessel to intrude (impossible now). They each had one set of clothes and a bathing suit. That in itself is a wonder, for with the ever-changing weather, we on Avante go from t-shirts to thermals, usually in the course of one day. The First Mate is enthralled with the book enjoying the comparison to past and present and admiring the pluck and courage of the woman.
It is a interesting coincidence that the first adventure described in the book is their trip to toward Chatterbox Falls. The First Mate is sailing there now, but her thoughts are with The Blanchet family and seeing it through the author’s eyes. Chatterbox Falls is at the end of a 3-mile inlet called Princess Louisa Inlet. To get there, one must go down a long fiord whose name changes with each of three bends. She reads that Captain Vancouver named features in this area after his sovereigns. Placing himself among the mighty, he also gave his name to a large bay we sailed by and that Blanchet and her children stopped in for lunch while she, in a twinkling, caught three trout in the near-by steam. Vancouver was looking for an inland passage through these mountains to the east. Was he so sure he had finally found it that he gave this fiord such esteemed names: Prince of Wales Reach, Princess Royal Reach and Queens Reach? He did not explore Princess Louisa Inlet mistaking the narrow entrance with swift running rapids for a creek. He, therefore, did not name Princess Louisa Inlet nor did he give the improbable name of Malibu Rapids to the narrow entrance whose waters can race at 10 – 12 knots over barely submerged rocks.
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Thursday, June 12th – Setting off at 0830 in the morning, we have about 45 miles to go to catch the slack tide at 1530 over Malibu Rapids. Once underway, The Captain makes a satellite call to the outside world to be part of a board meeting.
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Call finished, The First Mate chefs up a Birthday Brunch for The Captain.
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The guidebooks talk about winds that “in-flow” and “out-flow” in these fiords creating great sailing, but we had experienced no such winds in any of the many fiords we had sailed up and down on our Alaskan trip last year. Anticipating no difference this year, to our amazement, the winds do pick up to 7, 8, 9 and even 12 knots as we enter Princess Royal Reach.
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We raise our sails and make excellent time sailing downwind to our destination.
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We begin to notice an interesting phenomena every time we round a corner in the fiord. The autopilot has been set to follow a course based on wind angle. When we come to a bend, the wind turns the corner up the fiord, and Avante under the autopilot’s control does the same. Sitting comfortably on deck, we monitor the slow change in angle as we round each bend.
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Winds hold steady from the rear. With the jib out, we sail wing on wing down the fiord.
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The massive, granite walls of the fiord rise straight up above us as they emerge from their watery depths to nearby heights of 6,000 feet and more. If we had wanted to, we could have sailed right up to the walls and touched them. Depths in these fiords are as astounding as the heights above.
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The cloud cover is low, blanketing the peaks above us. It is easy to imagine walls and clouds pressing in on us. For the first time, The First Mate is able to understand and empathize with Captain Vancouver’s antipathy toward these towering heights. Our advantage over what Vancouver experienced is that with our charts and guide books, we know what lies ahead around each corner. Vancouver did not, and from his uncertain perspective, these brooding monoliths would be foreboding.
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We sail down the fiord to Malibu Rapids at the entrance to Princess Louisa Inlet, drop sail, and The Captain goes forward to drop the shrimp trap. Unfortunately, The First Mate’s attempt at coiling the unwieldy rope when we last pulled up the trap had not been successful, and she had neglected to untangle the rope. The Captain ends up doing an “untangle-tango” while getting rope, weights, trap and float into the water. She watches, with growing apprehension, knowing he is far from pleased with this whole endeavor of shrimp trapping and knowing, too, that she better come up with a workable system of rope management ASAP. Do Captains have the option of mutiny? Of course not — but The First Mate could be made to walk the plank. Better get thinking.
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Because of the overly long shrimp trap deployment, we are running late for slack tide in Malibu Rapids. Full speed ahead, we rush toward the barely discernible entrance to the pass. Up ahead, it looks so innocent. How she wishes she had been able to take pictures of this relatively short and potentially lethal little pass, but there was not a moment when full attention was not needed at the helm to hold the course. She is at the helm, and The Captain, the navigator, is racing between viewing his charts below and watching our progress from the companionway.
In our favor is the fact that the middle of the pass is quite deep, and, of course, we are just after slack tide. So we will not be tossed about by the 12-knot currents created when the tide is racing in or running out. Against us, however, is a narrow, “S”-shaped passage running thru a minefield of rocks and sand bars. The passage itself cannot be seen until we are directly in front of it giving The First Mate no time to contemplate what lies ahead. Only the charts tell The Captain what to expect. Upon entering, we are confronted with a spit of rock-covered land that juts out into our path, but she cannot turn away from it. We are in a channel cutting through rocks on both the starboard and port sides. Finally, the rocks to starboard bend to the right allowing us to, with relief, turn away from the fast approaching spit. She makes the turn only to be confronted by a massive wall of granite. How she wishes that we were doing this in a small, highly maneuverable powerboat. Again, there is a line of rocks on the starboard side and this impenetrable granite wall ahead. It looks clear to port, and that is where she instinctively wants to turn, but listening to The Captain in whom she must have faith, there is a continuing line of rocks coming off that spit at varying depths below surface. Most boats could have made their turn then, heading away from the wall, but Avante’s deep keel prevents that. Anxiously she waits and holds course staying in the deepest part of the passage. At what feels like the last possible moment, The Captain commands a 30 degree left turn. She executes the turn, but it is not enough. That wall still looms ahead. With unflagging confidence in him coupled with a strong desire to bolt, she waits until the command is given to turn a further 50 degrees. Command given, and …..
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….. Avante exits Malibu Rapids into Princess Louisa Inlet. It all looks so peaceful ahead now. How did Blanchet with her 5 children on their little boat, before the time of GPS tracking on electric charts, make it through Malibu Rapids? The First Mate decides that “little” boat was the key, and maybe just plain dumb luck.
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Day is waning as we reach the end of the inlet which has opened into a large bowl. There are boats securely tied to a dock, but Avante is too big to fit, and that is not The Captain’s way of doing things anyway. He has read that it is possible to anchor just below the falls in about 90 feet of water. Though the wind coming up the inlet would normally blow us into land, the current from the water out-flowing from the falls is supposed to keep the boat facing into land and pushing it off the land. The wind is forecast to remain light, and The Captain is eager to try. Will this really work?
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It takes a long time for an anchor to feed down 90 feet, and in the wait, the wind catches hold of Avante and turns her around, and she now appears to risk being blown into land. The anchor finally hits bottom. The Captain puts out more chain, and we sit on Avante waiting for the current to take effect. Slowly, ever so slowly, Avante turns back to the falls and pulls out on the chain away from land just as was described. We set the anchor, and we are secure with the sound of the waterfalls raging in our ears.
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For The First Mate, this is a Physics moment. There must be a force vs force formula to explain this phenomena, but for right now, she will just trust that The Captain is right and that the waterfall is not going to stop flowing overnight. Somehow it works.
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We are anchored so close to the waterfall. Steep granite walls rise up beyond the waterfall into the clouds above us. What a day we have had! We motored down vertical sided fiords with depths so deep we could have reached out to touch the walls. We thrilled to a great sail down the fiords with spectacular scenery all around. At the end of the day, here we are anchored below a waterfall surrounded by breathtaking beauty. The Captain could not ask for more on his birthday!
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Friday, June 13th – In the morning, we are still in the same spot with a light wind at our backs and the current holding us off land. There is a hike to an old trapper’s cabin above the falls, but it rained so hard last night that a steep hike across slippery mud is no longer a good idea. We are disappointed. The First Mate would have liked to stay in this special spot for another day, but we have places to go and a long distance to travel. And with all our earlier maintenance issues, we are already behind schedule. In the surreal blue and grey morning light, we pull anchor and head back up Princess Louisa Inlet to catch the morning slack tide in Malibu Rapids.
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Looking back at the falls, the heights above it are lost in the morning mist.
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Just before we enter the rapids, we motor past Malibu Club. What an interesting lodge this would be to stay for a few days!
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Malibu Rapids seems much less harrowing the second time through; the channel seems wider, and we don’t seem to come as close to the granite walls. It all happens so much slower this time. Afterwards, we head directly across the fiord to where depths are a mere 250 feet to pick up our shrimp trap. The First Mate, after much thought regarding the coiling tendencies of rope, has come up with a “rope management system”. While The Captain hauls the trap up from the depths, The First Mate is right there with a large orange bucket into which she is coiling the rope. It’s brilliant! It works! The rope coils in obediently. The Captain is skeptical about how well it is going to uncoil, but he is duly ignored.
What’s in the trap? Not exactly shrimp, but we do have a critter from the deep. While The First Mate is thinking that this is kind of fun seeing what shows up from the depths below, The Captain is muttering something about his experience from Navy Pilot Survival School. “If the energy exerted to obtain nourishment exceeds the amount of energy derived from that nourishment, then the task is not very well suited to survival.” He’s not sure how much longer he’s going to tolerate trapping shrimp. He continues to be duly ignored while The First Mate enthuses about her system of rope management. It worked. The rope is coiled and contained. Who says she doesn’t understand physics?
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Note the critter. Note The First Mate’s delight. Note the orange bucket with rope coiled and neatly contained. Lastly, note the basil plant which is up and out for its morning airing. The Captain regards this plant as another of her many attempts to turn a sleek sailboat into a floating RV.
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We begin to head on out the fiord in glassy seas and no wind. The morning in-flow fiord wind gradually picks up after we round the first bend, and we are soon able to raise sail. In fact, the wind rises to over 20 knots, and a reef has to be put in. We tack from one side of the fiord to the other sailing right up to the granite walls. The Captain returns to a much better frame of mind, and we continue on in this wonderful, beautiful, magical world of blue and grey.