B Bros Bobbing About

North to Alaska on Nauti-Call, a 26ft Tollycraft crewed by the 3 Buchanan Bros.

Monday arvo, 15th Aug, sitting in the sun at Alert Bay, British Columbia. The first Nations café, Culture Shock, is an informal host to an Austrian accordion player who can yodel like a German, a Vancouver guitar player on leave from cruise ship duty and a New York/Austrian pilot who sings in Vancouver, often at the Austrian club, and had to fly her friends up to the best place in BC. Don’t know the words but can sure tap along with all the rest.
For much of today we bobbed about in the middle of Johnston Straight watching T7 (transient) pod of Orca just lazing about. One large male, 2 females and a couple of kids were spy holing, tail slapping, sliding over each other’s backs and occasionally diving for a fish. Tomorrow we visit the first nations big house, do an island culture tour and generally slob about.
So what having you been doing till now you may well ask?
Humm….. cleaned and tidied the boat for a coupla days, shopped and socialized a bit then headed up to Nanaimo from Sidney on a shake-down cruise. Arrived to the midday cannon blasting a welcome as we tied up and had prime seats for the air show that evening. A few repairs/maintenance jobs and we were ready to go.
Hang on, the best camping/fishing/outfitters in the whole darn world, Carballo’s is just up the road. Thanks Ian for taking us there and Frank and Sophie for dragging us back out. Nine of us then hopped aboard Nauti-Call, set a crab trap on the way back thru Dodd Narrows and set out to catch dinner. The fish were practicing the Sabbath that day so back thru Dodd with a 5 knot current to pick up crab for dinner. Well what an adventure we had then, ended up with no crabs, no crab trap, and a very wet Ian who was very good at cutting crab traps off Tolly rudders. Buggar, we will now have to go to the Dingy Dock Pub for Dinner, woohoo!
Next day headed out across the Straits of Georgia to Campbell river, about 150km north. 25/30km per hour breeze made it a bit bumpy for a while but we finished the day, 1800hrs, on a glassy sea with blue skies. Quarter Master Stu rattled the pots n pans whilst First Mate Lach and myself went cross-eyed reading sailing guides, tide tables, current tables, charts and tarot cards trying to divine the exact moment to enter Seymour Narrows so that we wouldn’t get swallowed by giant whirlpools, swamped by 10 foot standing waves or run down by out of control cruise ships.
Gamely we set out to get to Maud Island exactly at 0800 and then enter the narrows with a 5kt ebb current going our way. Wooosh went Nauti-Call down the 2 mile narrows, gee what fun this is. Then a couple of miles later, just past Brown Bay (I wonder how it got that name), the wind got up. As some of you know with the wind against the current the waves also got up. We did bang a bit on those short sharp hills of water, ‘‘Confidence building’’ I said as we rattled along. Found the back eddies and worked them to help us get along in the direction that we wished to go in. With a North Westerly blowing against us we decided to continue around Chatham Point (rather than stop for a bit at Otter Bay) on the flood current. That is current flowing against us but with the wind, so the waves are smaller, and see how we went knowing that there were a few spots to shelter in if necessary. Once again we motored along close to the West side of the channel finding the back eddies and travelling along very sweetly. Past Ripple point, Bear Point (no we didn’t see any) and into the SW side of Race Passage, all famous places for ship wrecks along Johnston Strait. Sometimes we had quiet water and at other times we were in the middle of a sea of white caps with a good 15knot breeze. Love this little boat that happily chugs along working the waves and enjoying it all. Arrived at our destination Kelsey Bay at 1300hrs. Well the slack water is at 1500hrs just up the channel a bit, we could try for Port Neville, just a rickety pier with a very small public dock, about 2 hours away at our speed. Ok we all agreed, so we continued along Johnston Strait. One crew went to have a nap and another prepare supper. ( in BC Dinner is when you go out and supper is when you eat at home. So will we have lots of suppers and a few dinners or is it going to be all dinners on this trip.?) anyway that didn’t last long as the wind quickly got up to 15-20kts and the waves went white and a bit streaky. We happily continued, mostly, in a bee line across the strait and arrived at Port Neville just on the tide turn, by now you all know this was a good thing because in a little while those waves were really going to pile up.
Banged the jetty a wee bit in the wind and tied up after a wonderful day. Had a walk around the old, now closed shop and post office. Caught 3 rock cod for dinner, yummy, then Stu landed a Ling Cod. Well luckily there was another boat here and as much as their Spaniel (a damm dog) loved to fish the parents didn’t have much success so we handed over the Rock cod and cooked up a feast for ourselves.

Greetings to you all from Alert Bay and will send another message in a bottle in a wee while.