Monday July 28, 2014

Snags in Spider

July 28 I can’t tell when I make the bridge if I am going blind, but after locating my glasses it is determined that its morning fog both inside my head and outside, both dissipate in time. We want to re- explore the Spider Group and particularly Spitfire Pass in the wee boat. The last time that  I remember doing this was when we went through in “CASTLE ROCK” our 55 ft X fisheries vessel at high water and there was good water under our keel,  but we had tall stabilizers poles that were mounted on the bulwarks and there was a concerned about snagging the overhanging cedar snags. 

 We mount up with all the necessary safety gear  and plot a course through Spitfire Narrows in “Hugin/Munin”  but it is low water and I am wondering in my mind how we did this in a very much larger boat previously even at high water. Penny is the navigator with the paper chart and my ego as a man wants do it my way but many times this would end up in a bent propeller or worse.

 

Very Narrow Passages

After saying this, if it were up to my Sweetness she would want to be sitting in the safety of Howe Sound, but the zest for life’s adventure drives her out of her comfort zone big time. For her it’s a dammed if, or dammed if you don’t. YOU ALWAYS REGRET THE THINGS THAT YOU DIDN’T DO when opportunity knocked.

THE SPIDER GROUP ISLANDS are THE MOST SUPERLATIVE GROUP OF ISLAND ON THE PLANET and can only be done in a small fast dinghy or the long almost as rewarding way by kayak (I don’t do the 5 letter word). It has been a few years since Penny and I were here with a group of Burrard Yacht Club friends (5 boats in all?). Coast guard came on the VHF radio and announced unseasonal STORM WARNINGS for the central coast. This country is very exposed, nothing to slow the wind and Pacific swell but some low cagey islets and trees bent into pretzel shapes by extreme wind and the blast of salt spray. We located a very small pocket of a bay across from the designated safe anchorage (a larger bay). There was a discussion about where to anchor but we wanted to raft and we did. The boys wanted to go fishing in the worst way and the raft was left to be secured in the girls and the worry warts control. The boys came back with many large salmon but had to fight their way through a maze of spider web of lines to the trees behind in the small cove  and strung off the bow to the other side of the bay. And did it blow. WE all sat in the warm secure cabins celebrating are good forethought and the spectacular salmon catch. The boats in the adjacent bay all dragged anchor and had a miserable night.

When the storm was raging a call went out to Coast Guard from a mega yacht that had lost it dinghy it was towing somewhere out there. When asked by Coast Guard for a description of the dink it was a 30 ft. Grady White with twin 200 hp
outboards on it. The boy’s eyes all lit up and the possibility of salvage and the vision of this beauty being cast ashore in a raging storm soon puts this dream to bed.

The time before the cruise with BYC members in “Castle Rock” we used the high speed skiff to explore this area and were ever so diligent not to get lost in the maze of islets here. We felt we had a good handle on are navigation and had been gone from the mother ship some 20 minutes and as we cast are eyes over to the port side we spied a boat that that looked just like ours and IT WAS.  We had gone full circle with a chart in hand and still got lost.

On are bucket list this time was to find the perfect cream colour sand beach that we had discovered on a previous adventure.  It was A PERFECT CURVED BEACH WITH SAND THAT SINKS BETWEEN YOUR TOES AND IT STRETCHED FOR one quarter of a mile without blemish.

Bucket List Beach

Chevy was the first to land and she takes off at the speed of sound almost doing back flips with the sheer joy of being set free from the confines of the boat. We hiked through a small trail between stunted evergreens with gnarled bark and long threads  of moss (like green witch’s hair) stranding  from the branches and you are walking in a time warp as most of these trees look to be a thousand  years or more old. The trail is short and leads to the exposed shore looking onto Hakai Pass and thousands of miles away lays the Sea of Japan.

Hunting for Treasures in the Logs

 

The rocky shore is littered with parts of trees; none with saw cuts like the inner passages. They are ground round by the constant grinding on the hard granite. You can see what is left of the root systems still attached and you know these were ripped from some lofty ledge by wind or torrent flood their silver gray skeletons thrown above high, high water marked by a storm surge in the not so distant past. The waves in part have been known to have crested to beyond the 100 ft. mark and the full height is not recorded as the Weather Buoys were torn from there mooring at their passing.