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Saturday, July 10, 2010

Northern Exposure

How to describe the wilderness up here?

Yesterday, we wanted to sail but there was no wind. So we made a short day of it and just motored a couple of hours up to Fish Egg Inlet, and into a small anchorage called "Joe's Bay". We had the whole place to ourselves and took the opportunity to explore a bit with the dinghy.

At the head of the bay is a narrow channel that leads to Elizabeth Lagoon, but it is only passable at high water slack - the rest of the time it is a raging rapid. High water slack for us would have been at 11:15 PM, so we had to be content with just getting close to the waterfall during the day. The turbulent waters create a mass of foam, which runs like a river through the bay, forming what look like bergy-bits all around the boat - very different setting.
Sitting on the boat in the calm of the evening, the only sounds are the fish jumping as a lively seal is chasing them back and forth around us.

Today, we traveled a bit further north, about 30 miles in just over 5 hours, engine on the entire way. With the complete lack of wind it is hard to figure why we need a sailboat at all. We spotted whales (most likely humpbacks) on three occasions, but always at a fair distance off - they seem to prefer the shallower water along the edges of the channel and we are usually out in the middle somewhere.
We are anchored tonight in Codville Lagoon, a marine park just off Fitz Hugh Sound. This is yet again another incredibly beautiful spot. We have a little bay mostly to ourselves (one other boat did just come in), and you can sit in the cockpit and just watch nature at its best. Again, a seal is entertaining us by splashing all about, chasing some schools of fish, often scaring them into mass jumps out of the water. Sort of eerie - kind of reminds us of the movie "Lake Placid", expecting to see some monster sea creature emerge at any moment.
The hawks are circling and swooping down to catch fish about 40 feet behind our boat right now - impressive.

So here we are, in the midst of mother nature, living a primitive life on a small boat, in the middle of nowhere. I would say we are really back to basics except I notice we have had the inverter on for the last 6 hours to charge the electric toothbrush.
For the record, the last two days have been very hot, between 25 and 30 degrees in the afternoon - quite a change from a couple of weeks ago.
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