In Which The First Mate Is Hung In Effigy
We spend our first night in the Broughtons in Farewell Harbor, so named because that was the last anchorage for Captain Vancouver before they set off for home. It is a large anchorage with a wonderful sticky mud bottom and whose one dominating feature is a very well-placed fishing lodge. Most fishing lodges we have seen have been pathetic looking and uninspiring. Some appear to offer little more than camping with a roof over one’s head. Now, if The First Mate were to plan a fishing trip, this is the kind of lodge in which she would like to spend her non-fishing time! Talk about location, location, location! A rocky prominence jutting out into a peaceful bay. Someone had vision here.
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Saturday, June 21st – In the morning we take The Dingbat over to pick up our nearby crab trap. It comes up empty – very empty! The yummy section of salmon backbone The First Mate had tied in the crab trap is picked clean, and she is disgusted with whatever amoebic lowlife had the nerve to do that.
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The shrimp trap is further away in Knight Inlet, so we decide to pick it up from Avante on our way to visit a former First Nations Village. Because we will not be going far today and will be in relatively sheltered waters, we decide to drag The Dingbat behind the boat rather than haul it back onboard. We raise anchor and motor over to where we dropped the shrimp trap, but there is no marker visible! Strike 1! A search pattern is begun, and we finally locate it, well off to the west where the bottom shallowed to 100 feet near a group of islands and rocks. We retrieve an empty trap. Strike 2! The Captain just shakes his head in disgust.
We motor over to explore the ruins of Mamalilaculla, a once prosperous First Nations village. In “The Curve of Time”, Blanchet and her children visited the village in the 1930’s when it still was inhabited. In the summer, only the old, sick or very young children lived in these waterfront villages. Most of the natives were off gathering and preparing food for the winter, which is what led Captain Vancouver to think many of these villages were abandoned. The naming of the place derives from the fact that the last large Potlatch held by the natives in 1921 was held here. Mamalilaculla means just that: Place of the last Potlatch. A Potlatch was a gathering of clans at which the chief of the clan hosting the event gave away possessions (blankets, knives, cooking utensils, valuable ceremonial carved masks and implements) often to the point of impoverishing himself. Everyone who attended and received gifts at a Potlatch, however, was then obligated to hold one and give to the same extent. One’s standing and honor were at stake. In a culture possessing no written language, these events also served as a way of passing on history in the form of stories and songs. Agreements and bondings were publicly legitimized, while disputes were aired and settled. The Potlatch was central to the First Nations’ culture, but the Canadian government, not understanding the true nature of these events and wanting to do everything to assimilate the natives, banned the Potlatch ceremony in 1884. They continued on in secret until this last large one in 1921 which, unfortunately, was broken up. Natives were arrested, and all their ceremonial carvings and goods were confiscated and placed in Canadian museums. These objects are finally and slowly being returned to surviving native villages. At the end of our Alaskan trip last year, we stopped in the small First Nation’s village of Alert Bay and toured a museum that had been built as a Long House to store and display many of the articles taken from Mamalilaculla’s last Potlatch. Mamalilaculla was still occupied in the early 1960’s, but by 1970 it had been abandoned. Tours used to be held, but even they, too, have stopped. Though many of the buildings are still standing, the indomitable temperate rain forest of coastal British Columbia is rapidly taking back its land.
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The Captain can barely be seen as we forge our way along the overgrown trail to the village. We spot the largest bear scat we have ever seen. We had heard that a Grizzly had swum over from another island and was making this island his or her home. As we walk through the largest berry patch we also have ever seen, we have no problem understanding why a bear would be delighted to call this island “home”. The First Mate begins singing, which should be enough to scare away any living thing. Even The Captain resorts to an occasional “Hey, Bear. We’re here, Bear”. We finally come up to the village which is only slightly less overgrown than the path into it was.
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The roof of this home will soon be covered and lost in vegetation.
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The First Mate is standing in the front entrance of the ceremonial Long House. Note how vegetation has taken hold across the top log turning it into a giant’s window box.
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Here is another example of Mother Nature proficiently reclaiming what is and always will be rightfully hers.
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These people knew how to pick a site! This is the view of the bay just below the entrance to the Long House.
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We retrace our steps calling out to the bear periodically. We neither see nor hear the bear, and Avante is a welcome sight anchored peacefully below the old jetty on the west side of the island.
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Back on Avante, we raise anchor and motor over to Mound Island, the anchorage from which we brought in our first crab on last year’s voyage. Since it is a very short distance to Mound Island, we again tow The Dingbat behind Avante. We drop the shrimp trap out where we see others and motor on into the bay. The bay is deep and long. The only real obstacles are several large rocks toward the front of the bay. We coast to a stop well to the left of these rocks, as The Captain goes forward to drop anchor. When an adequate amount of chain has been let out, he gives The First Mate the reverse signal so that the chain can slowly be dragged backwards to set the anchor. She pulls back on the control, and slowly Avante begins to move in reverse. As is her practice when Avante picks up backwards momentum, she puts the engine in neutral. Just as the throttle is moved into neutral, a loud noise like the lazarette door crashing shut explodes into the air. The First Mate looks back in bewilderment at the lazarette door which she assumed had just slammed shut. Why and when was that door opened? And then it dawns on her. Oh, no, she has forgotten to pull in the painter, the rope to The Dingbat, and she has backed down on it and entangled it in the prop! That was the rope breaking with a loud snap that she had heard. “Bill,” she calls out sweetly. “I think the rope is tangled in the prop.” The Captain’s response and expletives are nowhere near as civilized or as maturely controlled as The First Mate’s. We are not safely secured, as the anchor has not yet been properly set; it is merely resting on the bottom. We have lost the use of our engine to move around with. And there are rocks not far away. Not good!
The Captain lets out a huge amount of chain to reduce any chance of dragging the anchor and then starts toward the stern. At about the same time, The First Mate has pulled in The Dingbat’s painter and is holding up a propeller-cut end. Seeing that in her hand and The Dingbat slowly drifting off Avante’s side, he fears the rope has been cut, and The Dingbat is drifting away. We have enough issues at the moment and don’t need to add a lost dinghy. “Jump!” yells The Captain. “Jump, what? Where?” asks she. “Jump into the dingy. Don’t let it get away”, exclaims he. The Dingbat is no longer just a step off the side of Avante. It is no longer a “jump” away. It is a leap away. Giving it all she’s worth, she launches herself into space and splat lands in The Dingbat. She looks like and feels like Bambi on ice only she doesn’t look cute like Bambi. Dumbo is more like it and not that cute either. At least the tubular inflated soft sides of the dingy did no bodily damage. She turns around, unbruised and kind of pleased with herself, and begins to pull the painter rope back into The Dingbat, but the other end of this rope is not drifting freely. She feels resistance and then quickly realizes that the other end is wrapped securely around our prop. The Dingbat is not going anywhere. The jump was for nothing, but maybe it could help to raise the low status to which The First Mate has sunk with this act of negligence.
The Dingbat is saved, but we still have a prop ensnared in rope. Someone has to go diving and cut the rope away. Feeling so very guilty, she offers to don the wetsuit and go into the 49-degree water. The gallant Captain, who has been fighting a cold, agrees that that is a very good idea since she is the one who caused this mess and “it’s a darn good time for her to learn how to fix a few of these things herself!” “Okay, I will,” she defiantly exclaims. She heads off to the bathroom because (heaven forbid) what if she had to pee while encased in the wetsuit? She learns later that an act of nature of that kind is not such a bad idea from a warming perspective when the water is freezing. As she sits there trying to do what she needs to do but cannot do because she is scared, the thought hits her that maybe she will not be able to free the rope from the prop. The one area of boat handling in which there is a very real being-of-the-weaker-sex disadvantage for her is finger or hand strength. She can usually manhandle things around with well-timed shifts of hips, shoulders and arms, but if finger strength or grip is called for, she just does not have it. Being aware of just how dangerous this can be, she has taken to wearing gloves when handling ropes or anything that she thinks will require her to grip tightly and hold on. Now she is worried that she just may not have the strength to free or cut the rope. If that were to happen, The Captain would have to squeeze himself into the now wet wetsuit, which takes two people to wedge him into when dry. Sitting there ruminating on all this, she is coming to the conclusion that it might not be possible to wedge his body into a wet wetsuit. When she finally emerges from the bathroom, The impatient Captain has all the gear out and is already half-way into the suit. He had come to the same conclusion that she had. Stepping forward, she quietly and firmly squeezes him into the arms and shoulders of the suit. He dons gloves and booties. She runs warm water from the stern shower hose inside his suit. Friend, Bob Trenary, from Telluride gave us that suggestion for diving in these cold waters. It will not keep you warm for long, but it does help lessen the shock.
One deep breath and down he goes. Soon, he is back up with the offending rope. They say that timing is everything. Apparently, the rope had started to wrap around the prop just as The First Mate put the throttle in idle. There was still power enough to wrap the rope around the prop and cut it, but not enough oomph to create a forcefully tangled mess that had to be cut away. There were only 8 wraps around the prop, and they freed up fairly easily.
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What a relief that the problem could be fixed with only one dive on the prop! Quickly, he scrambles to get out of the freezing water. Dripping cold water, he holds up the offending rope.
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The wetsuit, gloves and booties have not been brought along on our travels through the Pacific Northwest for pleasure. They were brought for just such an emergency, and emergency equipment must be treated with care. They are rinsed in fresh water and fabric softener. Then, The Captain, with ceremony befitting an 18th Century ship of the Queen’s Navy, hoists “The First Mate” to the shrouds where she is left to swing in the breeze and dry. He thinks this effigy most appropriate. She does not.
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Epilogue: In her meager defense, she does feel obliged to note that in the 3 years we have owned and sailed Avante we have rarely pulled The Dingbat behind the boat. The Captain disparagingly refers to a boat that is doing so as a “dinghy dragger.” Thus, remembering to pull in The Dingbat prior to anchoring was not part of her normal anchoring routine. Being of a certain age, this must be considered when giving The First Mate new or altered assignments on this very complicated boat.