Reflections by Kirk 09-09-2013

I have always enjoyed sitting around a fire, probably since my Boy Scout days when I first learned how to build a one-match fire. But I’m getting a little ahead of the story.

We finally hit a stretch of seasonable weather with more gentle winds from the northwest and clear, sunny days. We made our way through Clayoquot Sound, then back into the ocean for twenty miles or so to the small town of Ucluelet to stock up on provisions and do some laundry before entering well-known Barkley Sound. Our goal was Effingham Bay as we had very nice memories of this cove from our previous trip around Vancouver Island. It was in Effingham Bay that Kris and I saw the most spectacular display of phosphorescence that we have ever seen and maybe ever will see. Phosphorescence is a phenomenon of light created by tiny sea creatures. When they are disturbed, or sometimes for no discernable reason, they emit a bright glow of a fluorescent lime green color. You never know when there will be phosphorescence in the water or how bright it will be when it’s there. It was well past dark, really dark, when Kris called me up to the deck and said “Kirk, quick. You have to see this.” Just then, we started hearing tiny thumps on the hull of the boat. When I got up on deck the sea around our boat was alive with thousands of phosphorescent trails, bright streams of light shooting in every direction through the water. We guessed that a herring ball had picked our boat as party central and there were easily thousands of them, each leaving a trail of light. The tiny thumps we heard were herring that did not realize that there was a solid object sharing the water with them as they swam into the hull. Every once in awhile a large torpedo shaped phosphorescent trail went blasting through the herring ball light show, which we believe must have been a salmon or maybe a seal or sea lion. When that happened, it was like a starburst on the Fourth of July as the herring darted away from the predator in every outward direction. This magical light show went on for what seemed a very long time, maybe a half an hour or so. Quite incredible.

So we found ourselves once again in Effingham Bay. Our guidebook suggested a walk to a nice beach on the other side of the Effingham Island that was once the sight of a native settlement, so off we go. After a short walk through an old-growth forest, we came to the beach and discovered the crew from Sarita, a beautiful Halberg Rassey 46, consisting of mom, dad and a delightful and artistic ten-year old girl. We had been making our way down the coast during the same time as Sarita and spent a lot of time with them as we waited for favorable traveling weather in the same anchorages. It really is amazing how quickly close relationships can develop amongst people, especially cruising sailors. We had a great time at the beach, looking for treasures, building artistic structures, and wandering the area thinking of what it would have been like two hundred years ago living here off the bounty of the land as the native peoples once did.

When the sun started to lower itself toward the forested hills to the west, we began the walk back and I felt the need for a beach fire. We noticed a kayak camp in the bay on the way in to the anchorage; and when I mentioned the possibility of a beach fire there to the crew of Sarita, they were all in. We decided to check it out in the dingy, when we finished the walk. When we got back to the boats, we saw that there were eight boats now anchored in Effingham Bay. Not sure if it was by chance or by design, but we alerted every boat in the bay of the possibility of a beach fire. An hour or so later, Kris and I arrived at the kayak camp to find the fire already blazing away with the crew from Sarita as well as another wonderful couple from a boat named Cambria. This is especially cool as the crews from Sarita and Cambria had met one another the previous year while cruising in the northern reaches of BC. We all three boats were similar in that we are all liveaboards and are all trying to figure out where to winter before another season of cruising these absolutely beautiful waters again next season. The conversation was as stimulating as the variety of food and beverage that had made its way to our beach fire. As it began to get really dark, three more crews from three different boats made it to the beach where we had the fire with a corresponding increase in the quantity of interesting conversation, food and beverage. As we helped the new folks land their dinghies, we became aware that this was going to be one of those super phosphorescence nights. Lines that had fallen into the water, drips of water from those lines, and any other disturbance to the water, no matter how small, resulted in hundreds of brilliant lime green flashes. It was about that time when I started to realize what a very special night this was. We now had fourteen people from six different boats representing the countries of the US, Canada, Great Britain, Australia and the Netherlands; plus a young newlywed couple on their honeymoon who had all come together for an impromptu beach fire with no more than two hours notice.

The phosphorescence was astounding, the night sky was incredibly clear with thousands of stars and the Milky Way blazing a bright trail all the way across the sky. There were guitars being strummed, songs being sung and a variety of percussion instruments, some store bought and some made up on the spot to keep a rhythm. With the conversations, music, food, beverage, stars and phosphorescence, we were in sensory overload mode, but just continued to go with the flow.

I was thinking about how good life can be, but probably not much better than this, when people started lighting what looked like Chinese lanterns. The lanterns were paper enclosures, like balloons, with very wide bottoms and a candle at the bottom. What a surprise when these “lanterns” started to float upward and continued to soar hundreds of feet into the air. Three glowing orbs continued to go higher and higher before reaching a wind current that drifted them out of our sight, sure to fall harmlessly into the sea when the candles burned out. Wow!

It was sometime around midnight when we doused the fire and all got back in our dinghies to return to our respective boats. As has happened probably too many times over the years, Kris and I were the last to leave, but our reward was to see the path of each boat in front of us, revealed by the brilliant trail of phosphorescence left behind. This was one of the best days and nights ever, witnessing part of some of the very best things that both people and Mother Nature have to offer.

Unfortunately, the next night brought one small, but relatively annoying exception to the excellent things that have happened to us Effingham Bay. A twenty-eight foot powerboat joined the anchorage just before dusk. By the time it got dark, they had loud music blaring from outdoor speakers, a loud generator, no anchor lights and the foulest kind of drunken language imaginable that could be heard throughout the anchorage. We later heard from some of the other boats that this went on into the wee hours of the morning and made for a sleepless night for several people. Appropriately enough, the boat was named Aquaholics. A few days later, we made it to Victoria and for the first time in many weeks I read a newspaper. A headline on page five caught my attention regarding a rescue at sea. The gist of the article follows… The Canadian Coast Guard, a cruise ship, and several fishing vessels participated in the rescue of two men and a woman without lifejackets clinging to coolers and a partially inflated dingy. Their boat had been swamped by the seas and sunk in the Pacific several kilometers from Barkley Sound. The name of the boat was Aquaholics. So maybe good begets good and bad begets bad. I really don’t know. What I do know is that in this world there are some really fine things to experience and some really fine people to meet.

Life is good!