Sharphooks
Well-Known Member
It always makes me a bit sad to head south after these long trips. First, there’s a huge number of miles you know you have to gobble back up and all the exposure that comes with those miles. And you’re going back to where things are more sticky and complicated and not as much fun.
This year I was in pea soup fog from Port Hardy to Desolation Sound. Yes, Johnstone Strait in pea soup fog. The Yaculta rapids in pea soup fog. This was approaching Surge Narrows. I had a 5 minute window of visible nav reference then the tatami shades slid shut and it was all nav by screen again…..spooky going through a set of rapids on a fairly robust tide change hearing the hissing over falls and sucking whirlpools but not being able to see them….
I tried to console myself that nobody else would be stupid enough to do the Yacultas in a thick fog so I’d be alone which was indeed the case.
But It definitely takes a lot out of you when you’re stuck on a screen looking at blobs, with an occasional quick glance past the bow to see if you’re going to hit a log
Going past Port Neville I almost broad-sided a sailboat. The boat DID NOT paint a target on my radar screen. When I got back to my dock, the first thing I did…and I mean the absolute first thing I did…..was order a 24” Furuno NXT radome. I’ve put that move off for two years and I kick myself for the procrastination …. The 18” Garmin just does not paint all the targets in front of one’s boat….a simple result of not being manufactured to throw the same power out at targets the way a 24” radome does. When it comes to radar, bigger is definitely better.
The Strait of Georgia and the Strait of Juan de Fuca were calm and uneventful….good places to let the mind wander and go back over the trip:
……there were the humpbacks in Squally CHannel, all going airborne at the same time in different areas, as if they were all responding to some hidden cue—-at least 20 of them at all points of the compass launching into the air simultaneously and the furious report of their bodies landing back in the water at the same time
There was having my daughter with me for the first half of the trip and how much fun that was. I think we were both a bit pensive on what it would be like being around each other in close quarters like that for two weeks straight but it worked out great—-I got to do my O’ dark thirty fishing while she slept, the fishing was consistently good so I never got grumpy, and we got in lots of beach time with all the gorgeous weather
There was the wolf that non chalantly walked out on the beach in front of my boat as if I wasn’t there and proceeded to cavort on the beach
…….there was the pod of Orcas that came up to the side of my boat to snatch a spring off my hook then when cheated of that plan, went fully airborne over and over again right in the middle of a pack of humpback whales, also fully airborne….this crazy display of mixed media cetaceans all within 10 meters of my boat
…… Then there was that stupendous moon setting over Hecate Strait the morning I decided to drum up the courage to go through Otter Pass and out into Hecate Strait and take Trutch, Nichol, Barnard and Dewdney Island on the Hecate Strait side, a new and exciting nav choice for me to have made
Hecate Strait side of Dewdney Island and Jacinto;
And then there was that moment of impossible animal closeness in Curlew Bay on Fin Island when I heard the unmistakable raspy sandpaper call of a Sandhill crane, right at sunset, all alone, and I rowed my Avon raft to within a few meters of that lone bird.
The bay was suspended in a state of absolute quiet….just me, my dog and a lone bird on stilted legs who instinctively knew that neither my dog nor I were a threat and let us get so up close and personal despite its reputation as being a secretive and spooky creature.
These were just some of the daily occurrences that create all those indelible memories on trips of this sort and you realize you don’t need much more then that
This year I was in pea soup fog from Port Hardy to Desolation Sound. Yes, Johnstone Strait in pea soup fog. The Yaculta rapids in pea soup fog. This was approaching Surge Narrows. I had a 5 minute window of visible nav reference then the tatami shades slid shut and it was all nav by screen again…..spooky going through a set of rapids on a fairly robust tide change hearing the hissing over falls and sucking whirlpools but not being able to see them….
I tried to console myself that nobody else would be stupid enough to do the Yacultas in a thick fog so I’d be alone which was indeed the case.
But It definitely takes a lot out of you when you’re stuck on a screen looking at blobs, with an occasional quick glance past the bow to see if you’re going to hit a log
Going past Port Neville I almost broad-sided a sailboat. The boat DID NOT paint a target on my radar screen. When I got back to my dock, the first thing I did…and I mean the absolute first thing I did…..was order a 24” Furuno NXT radome. I’ve put that move off for two years and I kick myself for the procrastination …. The 18” Garmin just does not paint all the targets in front of one’s boat….a simple result of not being manufactured to throw the same power out at targets the way a 24” radome does. When it comes to radar, bigger is definitely better.
The Strait of Georgia and the Strait of Juan de Fuca were calm and uneventful….good places to let the mind wander and go back over the trip:
……there were the humpbacks in Squally CHannel, all going airborne at the same time in different areas, as if they were all responding to some hidden cue—-at least 20 of them at all points of the compass launching into the air simultaneously and the furious report of their bodies landing back in the water at the same time
There was having my daughter with me for the first half of the trip and how much fun that was. I think we were both a bit pensive on what it would be like being around each other in close quarters like that for two weeks straight but it worked out great—-I got to do my O’ dark thirty fishing while she slept, the fishing was consistently good so I never got grumpy, and we got in lots of beach time with all the gorgeous weather
There was the wolf that non chalantly walked out on the beach in front of my boat as if I wasn’t there and proceeded to cavort on the beach
…….there was the pod of Orcas that came up to the side of my boat to snatch a spring off my hook then when cheated of that plan, went fully airborne over and over again right in the middle of a pack of humpback whales, also fully airborne….this crazy display of mixed media cetaceans all within 10 meters of my boat
…… Then there was that stupendous moon setting over Hecate Strait the morning I decided to drum up the courage to go through Otter Pass and out into Hecate Strait and take Trutch, Nichol, Barnard and Dewdney Island on the Hecate Strait side, a new and exciting nav choice for me to have made
Hecate Strait side of Dewdney Island and Jacinto;
And then there was that moment of impossible animal closeness in Curlew Bay on Fin Island when I heard the unmistakable raspy sandpaper call of a Sandhill crane, right at sunset, all alone, and I rowed my Avon raft to within a few meters of that lone bird.
The bay was suspended in a state of absolute quiet….just me, my dog and a lone bird on stilted legs who instinctively knew that neither my dog nor I were a threat and let us get so up close and personal despite its reputation as being a secretive and spooky creature.
These were just some of the daily occurrences that create all those indelible memories on trips of this sort and you realize you don’t need much more then that
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