June 13 We woke up
to calm seas and a pull of the crab pots yielded us 4 more keepers so Crab boil tonight – with Louisiana Crab seasoning, Potatoes, Brats and Corn
– a real feast! We headed over to
Shearwater today – Diane needs to go get her eye checked out at the emergency
room. She has had double vision or
blurry vision since last Wednesday so it’s a good idea for her to get looked at
since we will be somewhere with a clinic. The rest of us will do grocery
shopping, dump garbage, some will fill up with fuel and some of us will just
top off our tenders since the plan is to not be back by here for 20 days. Diane got checked out and it was decided that
she needs to fly home to Seattle since they have limited equipment available
here to figure out what is going on with her vision. We spent the afternoon on
the boats in nice weather and our Seafood boil was fantastic! We anchored just
off Shearwater and enjoyed a calm evening at anchor.
June 14 - A bit of a
fire drill as Diane’s flight is delayed
until 5:30 which means she would miss her connecting flight to Seattle. After many phone calls it was decided that
she should go to the airport anyhow since there was another flight she might be
able to go standby on. In the end a
wonderful Canadian gave up his seat on a Canadian Fishing Charter flight and
she left this afternoon at 2:00 in time for her Alaska flight. That is the
hardest part about being remote on boats – when something like this comes up it
adds additional challenges. Once Diane was on her way home we left Shearwater
at about 3:00 for Moss Bay – about a 3 hour cruise to Blair Inlet.
June 15 -16 – We went to the entrance to Higgins Passage
where we spent two days exploring the ocean beaches – its amazing how much
stuff ends up on the beaches here. We also explored the Inner Lagoon in the
small boats – it was huge. We saw our
first Sandhill Cranes near the narrows.
The Lagoon becomes
connected to the outside on a high tide so we had to wait to leave in the big
boats until almost 3:30 so we could transit thru the lagoon. The other option
is to go back the way we came and make a very huge detour to get to our next stop.
As you can see from the chart it shows that the Lagoon is landlocked but that
is not correct. The Guys had charted our
path thru the Lagoon the night before with the small boats and it is a know
transit area at the correct tides – we had 2 sailboats that also waited to go
thru the Lagoon.
The Lagoon becomes
connected to the outside on a high tide so we had to wait to leave in the big
boats until almost 3:30 so we could transit thru the lagoon. The other option
is to go back the way we came and make a very huge detour to get to our next
stop. As you can see from the chart it shows that the Lagoon is landlocked but
that is not correct. The Guys had
charted our path thru the Lagoon the night before with the small boats and it
is a known transit area at the correct tides – we had 2 sailboats that also
waited to go thru the Lagoon.
June 17 – 18 –Via Higgins Lagoon, we moved the boats to Cann
Inlet and we found lots of Shrimp! Steve
and Tom took the Grady out and came back with the first fish of the trip- Cod
and Rockfish. This Inlet is in the Kitasoo Spirit Bear Conservancy so we went
on a tour looking for Spirit Bears but only found Waterfalls!
June 19-20 – We left Cann Inlet and went thru Meyers Passage
to Meyers Narrows which is kelp filled and with our lowest depth of 4.8 ft and
less than 0.1 mile wide. This passage
moved us from Laredo Sound to Tolmie Channel, Finlayson Channel which has
depths over 2000 feet to our Anchorage for the night in Bottleneck Inlet. This is one of the Inlets that is closed to
crabbing so the guys headed out in the small boats to drop pots in Wallace
Bight
. We left in the morning of the 20th
in the rain headed for Culpepper Lagoon which is in the Fiordland Recreational
Area. We need to enter at high-water
slack. We use the Douglass books for information about the places we go even
though it was published over 20 years ago! We have found it to have the best
information except when it comes to where to find gas, food, etc. Some of the
places in the book no longer exist but from the landscape perspective they are
great! The one we are referencing for this trip is the North Coast of British
Columbia – Blunden Harbour to Dixon Entrance. The nice thing about the rain is
the waterfalls are more dramatic when it is raining! We are transiting thru
Finlayson Channel and even though we are close to shore it is over 30 Feet
Deep!
We ended the day
with a cruise up the Lard Creek at the head of Culpepper Lagoon and had a
wonderful encounter with a Grizzly Bear walking along the creek on a very well
used game trail!
Tom and Chris Miner and Miner's Debt
Dave and Jane Mehlum on Bidarka
