Good Eating!

We are at Shawl Bay, home of the pancake breakfasts. This morning we dove into this pile of pancakes, along with all the other boaters. Three platters of pancakes later, the crowd was finally sated--though Phil and I limited ourselves to two each. They are really thick pancakes, and boy do they soak up the syrup!

Later this morning one of our neighboring boats took me out to our prawn trap, so I could use his trap puller. With our dinghy and 2 horsepower motor, the only way to get a prawn trap up is to pull it by hand. With 300 plus feet of line down, that's a real chore. But with his electric trap puller, it was a snap. Better yet, when the trap surfaced, it even had prawns in it! Thirty-one prawns, more than enough to make a meal. So I have some success at last with the prawning.

Here are pictures of pancakes and prawns.

Broughtons Scenery Big and Small

Each summer I am and again by the spectacular scenery that rolls by as we move about on our boat. The mountains rise dramatically out of the sea and frame our views as we slowly motor up nd down the channels. Mu first picture is of the mountains around Bond Sound, which we saw as we motored up Tribune Channel to the Kwatsi Bay marina.

My other love is to row slowly around the perimeter of our anchorages and admire the interesting rock and tree formations at the edge of the way. My second picture features a lovely piece of log lodged on the shore of Cypress Harbor, where we stayed last night. Nature provides lots of wonder here, and we love to admire it.

Please ignore the dark spot in the upper right corner. My camera went to the shop to get a couple of splotches removed but has now surfaced a new one. sometimes I can arrange the picture so it's not obvious, but not in this one.

Lagoon Cove dinner and sunset

catching up on pictures for the last week, since. Are now in a place where we can post them, I hope. Here is a picture of Phil at a dockside table enjoying the hamburger he cooked. The second picture is a sunset at Lagoon Cove. the airplane trails make interesting patterns that catch the dying sun.

Up the Johnstone Strait and into the Broughtons

On Tuesday we braved the reports of 15 knot winds at the south end of Johnstone Strait and left our overnight moorage at Forward Harbor at 5am, hoping to catch both a north going tide and the Strait before the wind reached its afternoon predictions of 25 knot winds. When we reached the Strait about 6am, we found about 5-10 knots of wind, a bit of a lumpy sea, but quite tolerable, so proceeded north. About a third of the way up our passage, the water flattened out and with the tide helping us, we made one of the quickest passages ever--a total of about four hours from Forward Harbor. As always, it pays to go out in the Strait in the early morning and check the actual conditions.

Our first stop was Lagoon Cove, a cozy marina about 11/2 hours off the Strait. Its regionally well known owner, Bill Barber, died this spring and we wanted to check in and support his wife, Jean and the great couple they have managing the marina. Bill was famous both for his stories, in particular wild bear stories, and for the generous prawns that he supplied for happy hour every night. This year the prawns are still coming, with the help of volunteers who are going out and pulling the traps. And the marina was doing well, we were glad to see. The night we were there was made even more moving by a bagpiper who played in the evening as a tribute to Bill, ending with Amazing Grace, to which we all threw flowers in the water in memory of Bill, who always stood on the dock to welcome us and remembered everyone's names. We will miss him.

Today we in Kwatsi Bay, another marina with a stunning setting--a small sheltered cove surrounded by high mountains. We had a potluck dinner last night and lots of great food, along with chats with several of the other boaters. These get togethers are always good sources of interesting information about boating, anchorages, and where to drop your crab and prawn pots. We are also now in limited internet bandwidth territory, so no pictures for this post. I will post them when I can.

Got my first crab at Lagoon Cove--my limit of four. We will have a crab Louie salad tonight. We also set our prawn trap outside Kwatsi Bay in a spot we were told about. We shall see if it produces and if we managed to get it on the bottom. Another boat at the dock here has two traps out in a different spot and brought in a large bucket full of prawns yesterday, so hopefully we will get some. I am using a different trap this year--but people say its not the trap, it's the bait and where you drop it. 

We are off to spend a couple nights in an anchorage near here where we have not been, but which was recommended to us. We always like to try one new place each year. We will try to anchor without finding any rocks or getting ourselves stranded on a beach--that's our objective for this year. No beachings and no rocks.

Shoal Bay Pig Roast

Today the weather turned beautiful again after a few hours of morning overcast, and was sunny and warm the rest of the day. Just in time for the Sunday pig roast, which we enjoyed this evening. Here are pictures of the view from the pub, showing the docks and the mountains around Phillips Arm, the inlet opposite Shoal Bay. Tamarisk is the white mast to the right of the picture, on the end of the dock. A second view shows the convivial crowd drinking and cnversing before dinner and the last picture shows us chowing down the pot luck dinner that boaters contributed to go with the roasted pig. a great evening!

First Fish

I have to document the first use of my Canadian fishing license, a rock fish that managed to hook itself on my fishing line. Not a very big one (note my glove for size)--about 12 inches. But gib enough to provide a small filet for each of us, and delicious too! I managed to find oysters the next day, too, so we fasted off the sea two days in a row.

First stop at Shoal Bay

We arrived yesterday afternoon at Shoal Bay, located on East Thurlow Island. We are gone through the first set of rapids that keep a lot of people from venturing this far north, Yuculta and Dent Rapids. Like most rapids, a piece of cake if you go through at slack water, as we did. Shoal Bay is a government dock, attached to land so that you can go ashore, a combination that gets more rare as we go further north (many of the marinas in the Broughtons are completely on floats, with no land access). On the land end, there is a small pub (a cabin, actually) which serves alcohol, beer and wine. Owner Mark McDonald us the cheerful proprietor, always with loads of work projects going on on the property. He and his wife Cynthia live in a separate cabin on the property, and keep a great garden where boat owners can get lettuce and usually things like a squash. They also have a pizza oven and a raosting pig. We will stay here four nights, enjoying a potluck pizza party on Saturday and a pig roast on Sunday. it's lots of fun to meet the different boat owners. I can also get my laundry done, which is what I'm doing while doing Internet work this morning.

Here is a picture of the pub and grounds.