Part 8, Oyster Escape



June 17-23, 2005. When we left Desolation Sound we still had an extra five gallon bucket full of some of the tastiest oysters imaginable so I hung them over the swim platform in Gay’s mesh laundry bag to keep them fresh for future gastronomic delight. The first couple of mornings I remembered to pull up and stow the bag before getting underway. But when we arrived in Blind Bay after a long trip through a series of difficult rapids I found the empty bag limply hanging from the transom. Those rascals had cut their way out and escaped! Worse yet, we are in territory where we haven’t found oysters in the past. Oh well, at least the oysters have been liberated and hopefully will colonize a new site.



In this beautiful part of the world when you are living on a boat it is hard to get enough exercise because there aren’t any roads and often the shoreline goes straight up five or six thousand feet. But sometimes the little docks have trails up to a waterfall or an overlook. The stores at the docks sell bear bells to wear when hiking to warn the bears that you are in their territory. The guidebooks have helpful information to let you know what you are seeing in the woods and which animals have been using the same trails based on their footprints or droppings. For example, black bear droppings contain berry seeds and bones from small animals; grizzly bear droppings contain little bells. A sign at the beginning on one trail warned of bears, cougars and wolves. The local dog surreptitiously followed us up the trail and at the overlook goosed Gay with his nose. She thought it was a wolf and almost jumped off the cliff.



The guidebook also said that Cutter Cove at the intersection of Knight Inlet and Chatham Channel across from Minstrel Island was full of crabs. That might have been true before a thousand people bought the guidebook. So, after catching only a starfish and one undersized crab I moved the traps over to Lagoon Cove where I got 15 keepers in three days. I also invested in a prawn trap, 400 feet of line, a float, a weight, an E-Z line puller, bait holders, a bag of prawn food and instructions from Bill at Lagoon Cove. Every evening Bill cooks prawns at happy hour for all of the boaters tied to the dock so he knows where the prawns are and how to catch them. It worked so well that Gay has now imposed a moratorium on crabbing and shrimping until there is more room in the fridge and freezer. I’ve only caught one fish so far—in the prawn trap. I was going to use it for bait, but one of my crabs got to him first. The potluck dinner at Lagoon Cove on Father’s Day was a special treat. And of course, Bill had a few new stories to tell.



At the other end of Clio Channel, Potts Lagoon was a nice stop—no doubt full of crabs—but I’ll never know for sure. Just after we tied to the dock at Port McNeill the wind cranked up to 20 to 25 knots for 48 hours—good timing. We refueled, provisioned got haircuts and generally enjoyed life in the slow lane for a few days. At the top end of Vancouver Island, Port McNeill is a jumping off point for destinations across Queen Charlotte Sound to the north. As such, it has all the services a boater might need within walking distance including a good restaurant (Northern Lights) and a dive shop (where I obtained a tough mesh collection bag guaranteed to hold up to rambunctious sea critters). Quite a number of cruising boats in the harbor were familiar to us from stops along the way during the past two months or from past years of cruising. This far out from civilization the boats on average are a little bigger and the cruisers are either retired or temporarily unemployed following a high-tech IPO so nobody is in a rush to get back to work.