wegenering

Thanks Ylee:
It's good to be home to my own space.
Though I could check the blogs it was quite a slow chore to comment.
The Humpback may have been a "resident". A female with a calf was there regularly when we visited 2 years back. Just before I got the picture the whale surfaced close to the rocks and let out a squeal as it blew.
Some researchers had installed an hydrophone in the Keeper's house with a pickup off the rocks but there was a short seine salmon opening the day we arrived and they were setting nets from the rocks there and might have disturbed the hydrophone - all we heard was 60 hertz hum. The shore man gave the Keeper 6 Coho Salmon 'cause they are only allowed to keep Chum Salmon and the fish are pretty well dead by the time the are taken from the nets.
The picture of the boat trailer is for you (and anyone else who watched Akitio).

Talked to Mom this morning. She's a bit grumpy 'cause she gave up her driver's license and the woman who drove her home the other day knocked down the neighbor's fence.
I told her to take a couple of deep breaths.
Best get my arse on a plane over there and visit I guess.
She is pretty well aware of what she is going through and I'm trying to catch on.
Moving house at 93 will be a disaster but Tloml just says to support whatever Mom imagines and hope she won't be able to manage it.
Even with all I can do and bringing in all siblings and grandchildren the outcome is pretty iffy.
When we were all severely younger: I was maybe 4 years, Mom asked me to watch my younger sister so she would not fall down the stairs to the basement where Mom had gone. I tried for a while but my younger sister is goal oriented so I let her go and was scolded. She bounced down the stairs and seemed fine (though nowadays she seems to think Alberta (where she lives and works now) should be quite capable of building pipelines to pump mud and sand with some asphalt mixed in to the B.C. coast and tanker this poisonous mixture safely out of inlets with rocks and currents and other boats.
There is not a hope that this can be done without a spill so our provincial Premier wants some more, wait for it:
Money!

Good morning SSSam:
I'll get the book and try to read it.
Does it have an "Happy Ending"?
When I first visited north of Cape Caution in '73 I stayed with a Fisheries Patrol Officer on a a 53' Packer converted to live aboard.
He had done a fair bit of the early research on the Owikeno Salmon run in the late '60s.
http://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_ 2012/mpo-dfo/Fs97-6-2457-eng.pdf
This PDF refers to this publication:
Ruggles, C.P. 1965. Juvenile sockeye studies in Owikeno Lake, British Columbia. Can. Fish.
Cult. 36: 3-21.
He was concerned then about the management of the fisheries there and eventually took his training for a "Blaster's Ticket" and built roadbeds for the logging companies.
If you can't beat 'em..........

Good morning Shoreacres:
I thought you might be caught by the crab trap.
I was reading the Barry poem on your blog just now. Too bad you do not allow comments.
Typo in your "about me" or maybe it is just spelled "wong"?
There is a Travel-Lift at Shearwater and the folks around the area use every method imaginable to work on the boats. It is now illegal to scrape and paint hulls on tidal mats and I have contributed more than my share of TBTF and other anti-fouling paints to the ocean already.
I might yet apply for a "relief" posting on the Lighthouses. Like other government businesses the Coast Guard is attrition-ing out the full time and looking for temporary employees. Gotta get a bit more First Aid training and a Radio Operator's ticket, though.

Late morning here OrangeRoses:
I made some calls to divorcees who dumped the fellows I worked with over the years. I think they miss having a carpenter about the place.
Threw in some maple fire wood for the winter - that job is endless but more rewarding than cleaning up limbs when you drop a maple in the lawn.
When the first moon walk was broadcast I filmed the B&W TV image with the full moon behind in the picture window.
Haven't seen the old Super 8 film box for years so I guess it went the way of many items that linger too long in our basement.

Good afternoon Shoreacres:
Seems I can spot typos in other peoples stuff easier than I can in mine.
Quite the waves in that video!
I don't know if the N.E. Pac. can produce such seas but the lighthouse they established on Triangle Island in about 1900 was dismantled after ten years. Rumor has it that the building was dismantled a couple of times by storms before we gave up on it.

Speakin' of waves:
Around here every wave might have a log in it.
Fred on the F.V. 'Purse Seiner" told me about running into one such wave. The wheel house was shifted some distance to the stern by the impact and they were "pumping like madmen" all the way home (after nosing into the wind for a day or two). One of the crew simply stepped off with his bag when they tied up to the dock and said:
"If I ever get this close to a fishboat again just shoot me."
Never even bothered to pick up his "crew share".

Thought I'd share what I'm reading these days:
http://silascrosby.com/sail/?page_id=17
Son-in-law is crew and they should be in Puerto Natales, Chile about now. Maybe there will be some newer photos uploaded if they can find a WiFi point.
How do I get photos from email to WunderPhotos?
Maybe have to go back and read Rob's advice.

Thanks Ylee:
The photo i wanted was taken by a better camera and photographer so I wanted to post it but now the sail boat way down in Chile is in Puerto Natales and sent 153 great photos from the run from Puerto Williams. Maybe I'll try to bring one or two over here.

In the center of the latest picture is the "Bull Run".
At low tide we walked it and it is narrow. we went back to the big boat and waited for slack tide. We started in when the flow stopped and by the time and this story goes back about 40 years we got to the other end of the "run' WE RAN OVER A 1' TIDAL WAVE (caps not intentional)

I had to check Google maps to see if the picture above really was the Bull Run. If you go to Google Maps and search "Egg Island, central coast BC" then wander due east to Greaves Island the Sat. view is pretty close to the photo from the Saab aircraft.
I have written some stories here that refer to "UpCoast Breakdown" which took place in the entrance of the little bay in the bottom of the photo.
Best Coho and crab fishing I have ever seen was in that little bay. The Northern Coho Salmon showed up for one day in mid July and we limited out in about 3 hours.
In 1976
Google will also find Greaves Island, Central coast A, B.C.

Afternoon Ylee:
Here is a link to Pacific Coastal Airline's Fleet:
http://www.pacificcoastal.com/id/38/Our-Fleet.htm l
I have been on the Saab a few times and the Shorts 360 once or twice. Small runways and weather possibilities here favor Short Takeoff and landing aircraft. The Beaver on floats is still my favorite though. One time I was dozing home in the copilot seat and the pilot flipped the yoke over to my side and said: "It's all yours." I had no rudder controls but I got to steer for a few minutes. Once the plane is trimmed and cruising in stable air you can pretty well sit back and watch anyway.

There is another story in the picture of the green islands above:
The first time I got to Smiths Inlet we stayed with a Fisheries Patrol Officer on his boat after the Salmon season closed. He had a 20' Cabin Cruiser he towed behind the 53' live aboard. The old Evinrude Electric Shi(f)t 70 Hp. would only move slowly in reverse.
We anchored the bigger boat in one of the bays to the right of the picture and nothing would have it but the Captain wanted to go shoot a goose. We reversed the small boat down to the left in the picture. I'm not certain where I let him out with the blunderbus. He told me to go back a ways to get the boat out of sight for the incoming geese and I tied it to shore and wandered in the bush for a bit but when you have seen one forest floor you have seen them all so I came back to pick him up and he told me to bugger off cause the initial scout geese were coming in. It was dusk and I was somewhat pissed off so I went out and sat drifting in one of the bigger bays. At some point the boat found it's way down a tidal stream on the falling tide. I could not motor (in reverse) up the fall so I hopped off with a bow line and tried to haul it up against the current. It kept grinding on the rocks and I went back aboard and backed into the current for some minutes before I made it back to the lagoon he was in.
Getting dark at this point and I had no idea where the channels were so I hollered and Captain answered: "Go to Starboard to run up the creek bed.' I soon grounded on a falling tide and after jumping out and pushing to starboard I gave up and the water went away. Captain sloshed across the now shallow creek in the tidal flats and clumb aboard with no geese. I did not have much to say at this time but the moon came out and we collected a bucket of huge cockles gleaming away in the mud. Back to the stranded runabout and found some small tarps and stretched out on the floor and a bench. Some time later we heard other voices: the other two guys had brought a tiny inflatable to look for us in the moonlight. We set an anchor, packed in to the inflatable and rowed back to the mother boat. Steamed the cockles, had a good feed and slept for a few hours. When two of us rowed back to the cruiser she was floating again.

OrangeRoses:
Pretty lady in a great spot. Might be from Flower Ridge Trail in Strathcona Park.
I just uploaded a duplicate photo because it had some mainland mountains in the distance. My picture locations are not accurate though. What I call Rivers Inlet looks more like Smiths and Nekwakto is Greaves Island. I think I deleted the image of the Nekwakto Rapids.
All I had in the plane was the tiny route map.

Thanks for reading and the photo calpoppy:
My friend who fished Halibut from a small boat took a .22 and a shark hook along. There are numerous stories of boats beaten apart by big halibut and having brought in one over 100 pounds in a 19' boat I believe the stories.
The Real Nakwakto Rapids picture above has some fine stories in it too, I'm sure. My own is pretty tame for that picture. We steamed by coming in from Slingsby Channel and headed for Alison Harbor.
I looked up the current there around the time the picture was taken:
Sept.14 1:36 AM 5:05 AM -11.1 kn
turn max
So I'd say the current was almost slack in my photo.
The Seymour Inlet system may not be the biggest tidal inlet in the world but if not it ranks high. I think the Nakwakto is one of the fastest tidal currents anywhere.
Here is a link to a better chronicler than I:
http://www.48north.com/jun_2006/nakwakto.htm
16 knots comes to mind. Somehow the loggers and the tugs pull through there anyway but they know what they are up to.

'Course I have a story before Nakwakto:
We nosed out of Smiths Inlet into "6 meter N.W. Swell with 3' to 4' S.E. wind wave and 40 knot outflow winds"
Got a bit worrysome off Cape Caution and the Coast guard boat left us behind so I tried to toggle in the entrance to Slingsby on the helm GPS. We were taking a pounding and Slingsby is the first shelter from the "Pacific" south of Cape Caution. Capt. was following my route on the GPS and it did not agree with what I was seeing on my "hand held" Lowrance. I asked him to trust me since I had no idea why his GPS would be guiding us somewhere else but I could not really see the display and was not familiar with it anyway. He was pretty busy watching the swells so He said OK. We followed my hand held in to the entrance of Slingsby and with the pedal to the metal made 3 knots over ground into a 9 knot outflow standing wave. It turned out I had toggled the helm GPS to South Latitude and the captain was headed to Antarctica.

Evening Ylee:
I'm about to hit the hay. Haven't done evenings or nights
For some years.
I did run Broadway in Vancouver
Late for a few months- I picked up anyone and asked them to tell where to drop them off. One guy was so toasted he did not have a destination. I took him to a pub imagining he would remember but no joy so I put him up for the night
Tloml looked him over in the morning and said he should continue on whatever quest he was working on but not in our small apartment with our 1year old daughter so I got Bruce back in the car and dropped him off downtown.
Saw Bruce a while later on the street. He had lost his overcoat and his shirt.

Still mornin' here:
I should go over to the building site and move the little backhoe back to it's home. Finally got it to start yesterday and scratched some of the grade around the build down a bit so run off water from the roof won't flood in on the floor. Hate that when I build a water catchment into a living space.
The sojourn up coast knocked my shed. off. I got totally acclimatized to sitting in a boat for hours watching the bent tip of a fishing rod.