KLEWNUGGIT AT ANCHOR

Wednesday, May 27^th

This morning I decided to make use of three overripe bananas and make banana bread while I waited to go pull pots. Everyone was having a nice lazy morning enjoying a non-travel day, again the sun is out and it’s beautiful. We are the only boats in the bay which is nice. Around 9:30 we went to check our pots and scored! A total of 8 keepers, three of which were 8” or more, the crab measurer was too small is all we know! I used chicken leg/thigh piece and prawn shells from the spot prawns I had cooked yesterday. Connie used cat food, a piece of old salmon, and prawn shells. Stinky all the way around. Forgot bait to reset so after running our haul back to the boats and quickly processing our catch, we zipped back out and reset the pots. Today there is no wind so the water was like glass all the way. There’s a lake here that is just about 10’ or less above the high tide line so it is always pouring out into the bay, creating a nice waterfall, it’s very cool. John spent the day ticking items off his to-do list which makes him very happy, there’s always a lot of things to fix and tweak on a boat. I spent the rest of the day prepping for the dinner we are hosting tonight which was going to be Steelhead from the freezer, but now is going to be a crab feast! Caesar salad, sourdough bread (the take and bake kind from Costco that lasts 3 months in a sealed bag, we don’t want to know the ingredients), Spot Prawns and cocktail sauce, and Bon Apetit Brown Butter Peach Cobbler for dessert (if you haven’t made before, google, print and make it today!). I use thawed frozen peaches of course since it’s not peach season, and highly doubtful one could find peaches in remote marinas even if it was! I also add some almond extract to the peach mixture in case you do make it. No keepers in the second pull except for Bill and Lorraine who got 1 keeper, but it was a short time period and was an outgoing tide. Greg was kind enough to cook up our crab for us while I prepared the dining table for our feast! A rousing game of 5 Crowns followed dinner and we all retired around 10PM, full.

Dinner in the Wheelhouse

The feast awaits

Looking down to the head of our bay where Far Niente is anchored

Huntress at Anchor, with UnforgetAbell behind, you can just see the tip of Greg and Connie's orange kayak sticking out!

Beautiful morning in Klewnuggit

My crab victims awaiting their fate in my galley sink, which is where I crack them

Bill and Lorraine 

The lake in Klewnuggit, note you can see the lake line just a bit above the high tide line

Close up of the waterfall at mid tide

Greg and I picking the pots in the afternoon, I got a pile of females in mine and all the bait demolished, so am hoping they make lots of boy babies

 

KHUTZE INLET TO KLEWNUGGIT

Tuesday, May 26^th

At dinner last night we took a vote whether to stay another night in Khutze or move on, and it was decided that we’d move along to Klewnuggit where we can crab and prawn, and hang out there for 2 nights maybe 3. We have our moorage reserved in Prince Rupert for May 29-30, still 3 days out. Klewnuggit is about 80 nautical miles away so quite a long run for us, but we will be that much closer to Prince Rupert which gives us more options on our itinerary, and it’s a beautiful day out! We stopped briefly at Butedale Falls for some boat photo ops but the low light and mist made for some dark photos. Butedale was founded in 1911 as a logging and fishing camp and at one time had up to 400 people living in the community, eventually boasting a hydroelectric plant. There is a large dilapidated cannery onsite that shut down in the 1950s and is derelict. Currently there is a group of investors that has a grand plan to redevelop the area into a premier fishing and marine destination, creating a desirable stopover spot for mariners along the inside passage, but to date it hasn’t made any progress. When we stopped here in 2018 the owner was very enthusiastic about the prospect of development and had grand scale mockup drawings and brochures about what was to come. I am not sure what has happened along the way, but to date to my knowledge and as visually evidenced, there has been no change. This tidbit about Butedale I got off Google but it’s interesting

The "Lights On" Legend: When the camp was abandoned, the hydroelectric plant continued to run. Because no one turned the turbines off, the lights of the town were left burning, creating a famous and eerie ghost town that passing mariners and BC Ferries noted.

After departing Butedale, John and I decided to cruise close to the shoreline of Princess Royal Island and Gribbell Island to look for the elusive white Spirit Bear, which is also known as the Kermode Bear, a subspecies of the black bear with a genetic mutation causing the coat to be white instead of black. These two islands and a third contain 15% of the Kermode Bear population but they can also be found other places along the Central and North Coast of BC. I look every year we get up this far, but have yet to see one. I might have to sign up for the Spirit Bear tour out of Kitimat someday, just to click that box. So far today, and it’s only noon that I am writing this, we have seen two pods of dolphins, and the other two boats saw a pod of Orcas (we were busy on the other shoreline looking for Spirit Bears). Lots of lumber in the water today as we transition to the Grenville Channel, fondly known as “the Ditch” because it’s long and skinny and a rather boring section of the journey.

The wind picked up this afternoon as we approached Klewnuggit blowing 20+ and making spray. Once tucked way back into the westernmost arm of the inlet things were quite calm. Today the Bryans were solo on anchor, and Abells tied up with us. We are in a good crabbing location so I was chomping at the bit to get the pots out. The crabbing spot is at the other end of the bay however, so about a 10 minute whaler ride to get there, but Connie and I set off to drop the pots after getting settled at anchor. Wind was still howling down the main entrance channel which hit us broadside when we came around the corner, neither of us dressed completely right for the occasion! I had my rubber jacket and leggings, Connie had rubber pants and a sweater as we took the waves broadside and spray came cascading over the boat, soaking our non-rubber parts. Oh well, it’s a beautiful sunny day. Back where the crabbing area is, the waves weren’t as big so we quickly got the pots set and motored back to the boat, at times 2-3 footers! It was all stirred up. Dinner tonight on our own, but played Mexican Train and cards until 10 with the Abells, always fun. We love card games.

Photo Shoot at Butedale Falls, Huntress

UnforgetAbell at Butedale Falls

Far Niente at Butedale Falls

That would leave a mark,,,,big piles of debris on today's cruise

All that's left of the Butedale settlement, cannery on the left

Close up of cannery

Close up of uplands and dock, Butedale

The "Vision" of a future Butedale, would love it if it came to fruition!

Klewnuggit Inlet, we are anchored at the Circle at the top, and Crabbing grounds are bottom left at the X, so it's a long run, relatively speaking. The inlet where the crab are, is called Exposed Inlet, aptly named. We had some waves back there on the first day!

Connie and I in our cold weather gear out crabbing. Even though it's sunny, it is a chilly wind.

KHUTZE INLET AT ANCHOR

Monday, May 25^th

Woke to the sound of rain, yes it is still raining here! The weather channel says per the radar that the rain is supposed to stop at 1PM. The Slowboat flotilla arrived mid morning, so 7 more boats anchored in the inlet. My morning was spent on sorting and editing photos and working on the blog. It seems to take a lot of my time doing that, especially on a day where many photo opportunities appear. It ended up clearing off late morning so we gathered the troops and made our way up the estuary in the whaler to see what we could discover. It was tricky at times, and it got down to 1.2 feet of water at which point we had to turn around. People from neighboring boats made it farther up the estuary because they have lightweight inflatable boats that don’t draw much water. We later discovered that “just around the bend” where we turned around, the other boats got a quick glimpse of a bear as it headed back into the woods. On our journey we motored by the remnants of an old rail spur and tram system used for mining 100 years ago, of copper, gold and silver. Now almost every activity you can think of is banned in Khutze – not only no mining and exploration, but no harvesting of crab or prawns, no humans or dogs are allowed to step foot on shore, as the First Nations owners and BC Parks have designated it as a conservancy. As we made our way back out the estuary with the intent on exploring another river, we noticed huge black clouds rolling in over the mountains and decided to boogie back to shelter and try later. It did indeed pour buckets so we missed that thankfully! Again around 4:30 it cleared off and was sunny! Went for a cocktail cruise and tequila tasting with the group around the bay, the tequila for the sole purpose of keeping us warm. Even though the sun is out, there is snow on all the peaks around us, causing a cold wind at times. Lorraine whipped out some excellent Sicilian spaghetti and garlic bread, doctored up a bag of salad I contributed, and we had a very nice dinner onboard Far Niente. John brought along the giant map of the Inside Passage and we spent some time discussing our route and our options. We are just 2 run days away from Prince Rupert, and 1 run day thereafter to arrive in Ketchikan. It’s getting real folks! 

EDIT: For those of you that leave comments, they almost always show up tagged as Anonymous, so if you choose to leave any comments, please leave your name!! Thank you! Blogger is not the most sophisticated blogging tool, but it's what I know how to use. 

Far Niente (L) with UnforgetAbell hidden behind them, and Huntress in foreground, all at anchor in Khutze Inlet

Remnants of mining operations

Headed out on our exploration cruise up the Estuary, it was a bit nippy!

Da Boyz

Just can't get enough of this waterfall and bowl

Nice late afternoon shot of the boats at anchor in Khutze Inlet, Huntress (background-L) and UnforgetAbell rafted to Far Niente in foreground

Actually warmed up late afternoon! Tequila tasting cruise around the bay. It was between Clase Azul and Campovedo Extra Anejo. We decided the Campovedo was a nicer sipping tequila, almost like a nice brandy or Drambuie

CODVILLE LAGOON TO SHEARWATER TO BOTTLENECK TO KHUTZE INLET

Sunday, May 24^th

Our destination today actually started out to be Shearwater for one night, pretty much the last marina on our route before hitting Prince Rupert in 6 days, and was only 17 miles from Codville Lagoon. I was running low on ½ and ½  for my coffee, and Abells needed to top off their fuel anyway. Enroute John and I did some weather research and it seems that today is a better day to do our short crossing of Milbanke Sound (our nemesis from the past) which is an open to the outside waters. Today the waves are predicted to be 2’ with 13 second spacing which is about as good as it gets. Tomorrow the waves are predicted to be up to 8’ with 11 second spacing which is way too sporty for us. So we made the decision to power on past Shearwater once Abells were fueled up, our new destination being Bottleneck Inlet. While Abells were fueling I jumped in the whaler in my rubber rainsuit and motored over to the dock in search of the few items on my grocery list, and Lorraine needed limes to keep the margaritas flowing.  She makes the best as I’ve previously mentioned, so we support that cause! The store however turned out to be a complete bust. Rotting produce, many bare shelves, and virtually no dairy or eggs to be had. The best I could do for coffee were 2 cans of condensed skim milk, which sounds terrible but maybe it will work. While in the store another boater said “be careful outside and don’t go around the back of the building, I just scared off a Sow and her Cub” – yikes, bear warnings already!  Once back to the boat and Abells all fueled up, we continued on. One of the things in boating is that you always have to keep weather in mind and be willing to adapt your float plan to fit.

Bottleneck Inlet has a beautiful little keyhole entrance to a long skinny picturesque bay and is one of our favorite stops. However, as the morning stretched out I discovered that another flotilla was on the same trajectory as our group, and we watched on the Garmin as their flotilla of 7 boats filed into Bottleneck. Part of the wonder and beauty of this experience of traveling the Inside Passage is the remoteness of it all. We decided to skip Bottleneck and hopefully get ahead of the flotilla by a day so we could enjoy that remote feel, so off we went to Khutze Inlet, another 30 miles beyond. Enroute, the boys decided to test their navigation skills and chose a narrow passage to transit that was showing depths of 12’ on the chart in places, apparently to shave off some travel time. We actually got down to 7’ at one point! But everyone successfully made it through. I think the boys like this sort of technical challenge from time to time.

It poured all day today, and I mean POURED. On the radar it was a dense dark green island of rain on top of us. Our travel time was nearly 12 hours but if one adopts the mindset that these long days are sometimes necessary to “get there” to Alaska, then you just suck it up and go. It is a very long time in the captain’s chair though, and John and I switch off from time to time, him doing the majority most days. We finally arrived at the head of Khutze Inlet around 7:30pm and did some recon on where to anchor. I don’t think we’ve been here before or if we have, it’s been a long time. This is a very deep fjord surrounded by towering mountains with snow on top! Cascading waterfalls are everywhere, the most dramatic one being at the head of the inlet. There’s a river and estuary at the head of the inlet nearby which it is best to anchor but one has to be aware of the very dramatic depth change where the sandbar from the river stretches out – and the charts are not very accurate we’ve found! I think it’s because these sandbars change constantly and continue to grow as silt is deposited from the river. Anyway, it is STUNNING back here, even in the pouring rain. We found anchorage in 80’ of water but as we swung around we saw depths of 140’ so that tells you how fast it drops off. The winds are predicted to be very calm, so we should be fine overnight. I whipped up some teriyaki chicken rice bowls for dinner, which we finally sat down to eat around 9pm. Far Niente is anchored separately from us, and UnforgetAbell rafted alongside them, so tonight was a night off for us from group gatherings. Lorraine is hosting tomorrow’s dinner, so we will all be together tomorrow. As we got into bed I opened our porthole window so I could listen to the waterfalls all night, our very own organic white noise, so peaceful.

Even through the rain and mist, the view at the head of Khutze is stunning, this is the view from our anchorage

Big Eagle atop the dead tree at Shearwater 

Shearwater  Uplands

The narrow passage we navigated

Nice view of UnforgetAbell leaving Codville this morning

Derelict ship on Denny Island near Shearwater

Not a lot of visibility for our flotilla

One of many beautiful waterfalls, this one on opposite shore from Bottleneck

New Bella Bella, view from the water

PRUTH BAY TO CODVILLE LAGOON

Saturday, May 23rd 

This morning I heard my Eagle friends chattering about so wrapped myself in a blanket and sat outside with my coffee and binoculars and watched the nest a bit more. At one point both Eagles flew from the nest and perched together on a branch nearby. I hastily got my camera and got a picture! I love the wildlife. 

It is hard to leave this beautiful place, but we are on a mission to get to Alaska and it takes daily progress to get there. It’s nearly 700 miles from Seattle, and we are about halfway there now. Our destination today is Codville Lagoon, about 30 miles away, or 3 hours. The entrance to Codville Lagoon is very narrow. Last time we were in Codville, just as we reached the narrow entrance, a pod of 3 Orcas was making their way out of the lagoon. There was nothing we could do as we were already in the narrow passageway so John put the engines in neutral so they could safely pass. It was one of those moments where you just had to soak in the close encounter, pictures would never do it justice! Many a wildlife moment is diminished by attempting to take pictures instead of just being in the moment and filing it away in your brain. Anyway, moving along, we made our way to the very back of Codville Lagoon and set our anchors, Abells rafting up with us because Connie is cooking dinner for everyone tonight. Greg and I decided to put out some crab traps to see if there was any crab life in the bay. It was rocky where we were anchored so we ran the pots to the opposite end of the lagoon where it appeared on the charts to have a remote chance of crab. We will see. There’s actually a nice but technical hike through the woods to Sagar Lake which has a beautiful sandy beach, and we’ve done this hike before, even seeing wolf prints in the sand. However, earlier in the day I had read a post by another boater who said they heard a cougar growl in the distance while anchored in Codville! Wolves, while intimidating, don’t typically bother humans. Cougars on the other hand, will stealthily stock humans and that scares me more than any bear or wolf! Luckily it was raining so I didn’t have to appear a wimp by opting out of the hike because of cougars. Dinner tonight was on our boat at Connie’s request and she served up some delicious chicken enchiladas in green sauce, accompanied by a Mexican chop salad that I made, topped off with brownies for dessert. Lorraine wasn’t feeling well so John had retrieved Bill from their anchorage to join us for the evening. We taught him how to play 5 Crowns and had a fun evening. Prior to cards, Greg and I went back to our pots and discovered exactly 1 baby Dungeness crab in one pot, and 1 baby Red Rock Crab in the other, neither of which were keepers. OH well, you don’t catch if you don’t try!

Mom and Dad Eagle having "date morning" maybe discussing their eaglets, or what their harvesting plan is for the day, or hatching a plan to dispatch those pesky ravens who keep threatening the nest.

Codville Lagoon views from our anchorage

Looking the other direction in Codville

More Codville views

PRUTH BAY AT ANCHOR

Friday, May 22nd

Surprisingly, John awoke at 6:30 and went fishing with Greg and Bill. It was a quick trip though, they came back just two hours later pretty chilled to the bone. I spent the morning cooking in the galley, and made a macaroni salad and a big batch of clam chowder for future meals, it always tastes better on day 2, so maybe it is tomorrow night's dinner? This was my first major cooking project in the new boat, and I am loving my new galley, so much more space for my creations. Our plan today was for a lunch time weenie roast on the beach, a tradition that Shannon started years ago, and is something we try to do every stop here. Shannon and David had originally planned to be here with us, and Shan was in charge of organizing the weenie roast. Since they peeled off earlier than expected, Shan passed all the supplies to Connie so that we could carry on her vision. 

Pruth Bay has the most GORGEOUS beaches on the west and north sides of the island, they are like a beach you'd find in the tropics, sweeping half moon bays with white sand beaches. They are absolutely stunning! So after gathering the troops on our dinghy around 11:30, with everyone bundled up (it was overcast and chilly), we motored over to shore to the docks at Hakai Institute, a marine research facility that's been here for a long time, formerly a fishing lodge. Hakai Institute is privately funded by a multimillionaire and his wife through the Tula Foundation. They are doing amazing things so it's worth reading up on them. Upon arrival, we unfortunately learned that beach fires were prohibited this year, a first, so disappointing! But also understandable since there is no way to fight a fire on this small island, and it would be devastating. BC and Canada/US overall have had a terrible time with wildfires the past 10 years, so we are guessing there is a moratorium on all manmade recreational fires just to be safe. After a short hike east to west across Calvert Island we came to the first beach "West Beach" and everyone that had never been here before just gasped when it came into view. It is nothing like you'd ever imagine seeing up on the rugged coast of BC. Then we did the rather technical and challenging hike to "North Beach" equally gorgeous with so much sea life. It was a really low tide so we hiked to the tall rocks at the water's edge and viewed the plentiful sea life - mussels, anemones, starfish, periwinkles, and all kinds of shell life. On the beach we found gobs of abalone shells, beautiful mussel shells and polished rocks and wood. As the day wore on the sun came out and warmed us all up while the wind died down, making us shed our layers and enjoy this unexpected gift of a beautiful day! 

Since we weren't able to have our beach fire and weenie roast we decided to come back to the boat and execute lunch here. The boys had to move the boats out to deeper water this morning before our hike. As we were eating lunch in our new location, we spotted a huge eagle's nest on shore and that was another hour of entertainment as we watched Mom and Dad Eagle take turns sitting in the nest and guarding the nest. There were ravens nearby on neighboring trees that we surmised were waiting for an opportunity to steal the eggs or baby eaglets. Now we are all spent for the day. Too late of a lunch to make dinner, so now we just have to stay awake until a reasonable bed time hour! What a great day. 

The iconic scary tree at Pruth Bay on Hakai Institute land, carved directly into the tree in the 1980s

Greg and Connie awaiting "Boober" (Boat Uber, our dinghy) to pick them up for our trip to shore

Another boat in the bay, but the picture was about all the seals atop mostly submerged rocks in our bay

Wolves!! We didn't see any of them but if you haven't seen the documentary "Island of the Sea Wolves" it's directly related to wolves carving out a habitat and existence subsisting on marine life. It's on one of the big streaming services. 

Hiking the well developed trail through the gorgeous woods

Love the patterns in the sand

Kelp Art

The tangled coastal woods probably ravaged by severe weather over time

A swamp but a pretty swamp

A couple of toads in the swamp

Connie arriving at North Beach on Calvert Island after our strenuous hike

Just another beach panorama

Sea Life - starfish, sea anenomes retracted of course for the low tide, mussels in the background

BIG group of Mussels

Such interesting rock formations 

John exploring tidepools

I thought this was funny, looks like a duck sticking out of the sand (it's wood)

Giant Tree Fungus

Just In Case.....

Lorrain and I on the beach, John  photoboming

First view of West Beach from the trail, taken by Connie

Our Eagle Family behind the boat, one is in the nest and the other guarding the nest, perfect perch