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| Haida Heritage Center in Skidegate |
Each year
I say that this will be my last trip up the British Columbia coast. And each year I discover new reasons to
return. This year, the reason was a
visit to Haida Gwaii.
Haida
Gwaii is the original name for the Queen Charlotte Islands, a collection of three
relatively large islands and myriad smaller ones located approximately 100
miles west of the north coast of British Columbia. The islands were originally settled by the
Haida First Nations about 12000 years ago, and the remnants of their settlements
are still visible today: slowly decaying totem poles, and moss-covered pits
where longhouses once stood.
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| Sk'ang Gwaii on Anthony Island |
Rather
than single hand this trip, I decided to take on crew. Maryann and Mary, two other members from the
South Sound Women Sailing Group signed up to do the northbound leg with me,
while Joyce and Mike, two other fellow sailors signed on to bring the boat back
south.
Because Mary could only take one
month off, Maryann and I sailed from Port Hadlock Port McNeill, on the NE coast
of Vancouver Island in June. From
McNeill Marynn returned to Olympia while I flew to Shanghai to meet my sister
for a two-week tour of China (more on that later). In early July I returned to
McNeill, where Mary and Maryann joined me to sail across Queen Charlotte Sound
and up the East Coast of Haida Gwaii.
From there, Mary and Maryann would fly back to Olympia, and Mike and
Joyce would help me bring the boat back down the east coast of Moresby Island
and on down the West Coast of Vancouver Island. That was the plan.
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| Prepping the boat in Hadlock |
Because Haida
Gwaii is so remote, I put a lot of thought into preparations. I emptied and sorted all lockers, added a
halyard for an inner foresail, and bought spares for anything I could think
of. I carted bags and boxes of grains, rice,
canned goods and paper goods onto the boat, knowing that the provisions along
the inside passage would be both scarce and expensive. I lashed 2 jerry cans of diesel onto the
shrouds to extend our range, and had the valves adjusted on the engine. I took extraneous gear off the boat to make
more room for crew and their gear. The plan was made…now all we needed to do
was execute.
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| Sonrisa on Jedediah Island |
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| Underway with dinghy in tow |
We pulled
away from Port Hadlock on June 2. The
one piece of equipment for which I had no backup was the autopilot, which gave
up the ghost in the Strait of Juan de Fuca 6 hours later. The only backup I had was the wind vane, an
amazing invention that will steer the boat by the wind as long as the sails are
up. So, when we were sailing, we could let
go of the tiller – otherwise, the two of us shared the steering all the way to
Port McNeill. In the meantime, when we
had Internet, I researched replacement options and had a new autopilot sent to
Mary to bring with her in July.
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| Lacy Falls in the Broughtons |
The trip
to McNeill was otherwise uneventful. I
have made this voyage many times and it was lovely to revisit favorite
anchorages, and to discover yet new ones.
Because we had ample time on this leg, I had time to shakedown a few of
the boat systems and do a few last minute adjustments. We had lovely weather – warm and mostly dry –
and the boat (minus the autopilot) gave us no trouble.
The trip
to China was a fascinating diversion, worthy of a blog in itself. My sister is a teacher in Fairfax County, VA,
and had heard about another teacher, Chinese by birth, who led an annual tour
to China that always got rave reviews.
Last fall, she asked me if I would be interested in going with her to
share the experience and the room. It
sounded like a great opportunity and, as my summer plans took shape, I realized
I could find a way to do it all by mooring the boat in McNeill. In two
weeks, we visited Shanghai, Suzhou, Hangzhou, Guangzhou (birth village of our
guide), Nanjing, Xi’an (site of the terra cotta warriors) and Beijing. We climbed the Great Wall, ate stir fry, visited
the museum to the victims of the Rape of Nanking, ate stir fry, learned the
many benefits of green tea, ate stir fry, watched silk worm cocoons being
unwound, ate stir fry, tried to count the ten thousand warriors, ate stir fry,
rode a bike around the top of a Ming dynasty city wall…and ate more stir
fry. Roni and I had a lot of fun sharing
a room, pictures and observations. We’re
already taking about the next trip together.
Then I was
back to Port McNeill, where I slept for 18 hours straight after the long flight
from Beijing. Mary and Maryann arrived
the next day with the autopilot and took off to tour McNeill while I installed
it. After a day to provision and unpack,
we took off. After two nights heading to
the north end of Vancouver Island, we set out to cross Queen Charlotte Sound
with a forecast of southerly winds. Unfortunately,
the southerlies followed a few days of northerlies, and the seas were steep and
confused. Just a few hours out, my two
crew were both suffering from ‘mal de mer,’
By early afternoon, 5 hours into an expected 24 hour crossing, when it
became clear that they would not be able to stand a night watch, I turned on
the engine and headed for the mainland coast to wait for better
conditions. Enroute, the new autopilot
failed as the ram unscrewed itself from the housing.
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| Morning calms |
By the
time we arrived at our anchorage, the seas and the seasickness had subsided,
and the next day we did a short leg north on the mainland. Two days later we made a second attempt, when
the seas were so calm that we had to motor virtually all the way across Hecate
Strait, arriving in Rose Harbor just 24 hours later.
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| Multi-colored batstars in Burnaby Narrows |
From Rose Harbor, we began working our way up
the coast with a first stop at Sk’ang Gwaii on Anthony Island, a World Heritage
site known for the aging totems and longhouse sites. The Haida now have ‘watchmen’ stationed at
the important sites who welcome visitors and provide a very professional and
informative guided tour of the artifacts.
It took us
about 2 weeks to work our way up the coast, anchoring out each night. We had some great sailing and wildlife
viewing, including eagles, loons, sand hill cranes, black bear, orca and
humpback whales. We fished for rockfish,
and caught two salmon as well as a couple of dogfish. We visited 5 native village sites and were
invited to do a potluck dinner with the watchman and watchwoman in Tanu.
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| Unfinished pole on the ground in Windy Bay |
We were
especially privileged to see the new totem pole in Windy Bay on the
ground. Windy Bay was the scene of a
historic standoff between members of the Haida Band and the logging industry in
the mid 1980’s a standoff which resulted in the setting aside of much of
Moresby Island as a preserve, known as Gwaii Hanaas (Beautiful Islands). The totem pole was due to be raised on August
15, and it arrived by boat in Windy Bay the day before we did. We could feel the anticipation and pride as
we spoke to people about it, since this was the first pole to be raised in the
preserve in 130 years.
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| Shelf fungus |
Because
the preserve has not been logged for 20 years, the area is incredibly pristine
and unspoiled. It is not as rugged and wild
as Alaska, but has a more serene beauty to it.
We saw few boats over those two weeks, as the area is visited by only
1500 or so people per season – most of those being kayakers or people coming in on tour
boats from Sandspit.
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| Sandspit Marina |
After a
couple of weeks working our way north, we arrived in Sandspit in early
August. Since we still had a few days
before Mary and Maryann had to leave, we did a short side trip through the
Skidegate Channel, a narrow, shallow, 5 mile long passage between Graham and
Moresby Islands. It is well marked with
aids to navigation, but still a bit nerve-wracking to see the depth sounder
saying 10, 11, 12 feet.
On our
return, Mary and Maryann headed home while I changed the oil and prepared for
Joyce and Mike’s arrival. Mike arrived
first, and the two of us rented a car and toured Graham Island,
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| Sunset in Masset |
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| Haida dance to open the music festival |
stopping for 3 days at the Edge of
the World Music Festival, an annual event in Tlell. It is a low-key but festive affair, attended
mostly by locals. Mike and I too a hula hoop workshop - and I won a hula hoop...and found a place to stow it suspended from the V-berth ceiling. We met a very fun couple from Alberta who were touring
Graham Island on their bicycles. The
four of us had dinner after the festival at a local restaurant where the only
other table of diners happened to be Justin Trudeau and his family (the son of
Pierre and Margaret and the heir-apparent to the liberal party in Canada.
Once Joyce
arrived, we all went to the Haida Heritage Center on August 15, where we watched the live streaming of the pole raising in Windy Bay with 400 other locals.
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| Raised pole at Windy Bay |
What a privilege that was! We learned so much about Haida art and
culture on this trip, and were constantly impressed by the generosity and pride
of the Haida we met. Joyce and Mike are
sailboat racers, like me, and the three of us had a lot of fun sailing back down the
coast, analyzing trim and debating tactics.
We visited some of the same places and some anchorages I had not visited
on the way up – we were able to see the pole upright at last when we went to Windy
Bay.
A few
other observations and interesting events:
For reasons I don’t understand, the water in the Queen Charlottes is
10-15 degrees warmer than in Puget Sound…warm enough to swim in, in fact. I know that after making two unplanned
entries: one time to chip barnacles off of the depth sounder and the second
time to unwrap the dinghy painter from the prop. Both times I was pleasantly surprised to find
the water to be refreshing, but not at all chilly.
And then
the weather turned. All the way up Mary and Maryann and I had fair and warm weather – sunny, a bit breezy, and northwest winds - the
typical summer pattern. But on the way
down the southerlies set in, along with wetter weather and higher winds. In some anchorages we encountered williwaws
of 35-40 knots at night, and on two occasions I put out 275 feet of rode.
Fortunately it always seemed to clear as we
left the anchorage so we had dry and pleasant days…until we arrived in Rose
Harbor after a boisterous sail. The
winds picked up to 40 knots and it rained in buckets as we hung on the
mooring. It was so bad that even the
fishing boats came in to hunker down, and the tour boats cancelled trips to
Sk’ang Gwaii. The good part of that was
that we were able to completely fill one of the water tanks from the dinghy,
obviating a trip to a water buoy.
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| Off the Queen Charlotte Strait on the mainland |
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| Morning reflections |
Day after
day we listened to the forecast and after 3 nights, when it had finally eased,
the forecast was for 5 more days of southerlies. Continuing along the west coast of Vancouver
Island in those conditions would not have been fun – and I could not guarantee
to Joyce and Mike that we would get home when they needed to. So we opted for plan B, crossing to
Shearwater and heading south along the Sunshine Coast.
Crossing Hecate Strait was lovely – we
were able to sail for the first 18 hours and then had to motor for another
8. After a night in Shearwater, we headed down the mainland coast under steadily dryer weather. The sun came back out, the humpbacks
visited in profusion, and we explored some new anchorages that were quite
charming. Fog set in from time to time - rounding Cape Caution we were in and out of patches - but in general the visibility was good.
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| Small slide in the Queen Charlottes |
In the
Broughtons we witnessed the fallout from the rain event: a debris field of logs
and shredded timber that stretched from Tribune Channel to Johnstone
Strait. It turned out that there had
been a massive landslide in Knight Inlet, on a scale that locals had never seen
before. This photo here is of a small slide
in Haida Gwaii, but provides some idea of the devastation that can result. The topsoil layer is only inches thin and the
trees really are just hanging on by their fingernails.
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| Wind vane in action |
All in all,
our trip south was very pleasant.
Fortunately, we had received a replacement ram for the autopilot from
Raymarine while we were in Sandspit, and it functioned flawlessly when we had to motor for lack of wind.
When there was wind, we steered
ourselves or used the wind vane, which also served us very well.
All told,
I was gone for almost 4 months. I was
very pleased with the boat's performance – other than the autopilot, we had no issues. The engine functioned flawlessly and the boat
was easy to balance under sail. We got
some good practice with reefing and anchoring, and even had a day or two to play with the drifter reacher.
Now my plan is to put the boat on the hard for the winter and take off
for warmer climes…I leave on Sunday for Malaysia, from where I will help
deliver a boat to Cairns.
