Ocean Falls to Fury Cove

Heading south from Ocean Falls through Lama passage on August 9th, we were surprised to see the Disney Wonder’s icon appear on the chart plotter. We’ve seen the Disney Wonder in Alaska.  She is a big ship.  Alaska has big waters.  Greywolf is a small ship.  Lama Passage is small water.  

Greywolf made the turn into the bigger waters of Fisher Channel before 

the handsome ship passed us.

She has Mouseketer ears on her stacks.  It made us smile just to look at her.

It was obvious there was a “fish opening” the next day.  Seine boats were streaming north all day as we headed south toward Fury Cove where we would spend the night.

Underway equipment change-out.  We are part of the cruising community that engages in the on-going “swivel-on-the-anchor-chain”/“no-swivel-on-the-anchor-chain” discussion.  Doug is taking the swivel off the chain to see if that works better.  Anchor retrieval problems have been a topic of concern that we have spared you from because we didn’t want you to worry.  

Addenbrook Island light station--one of the few reference points on the marine weather forecast for this part of the coast.  Environment Canada apparently doesn’t see much point in providing wind/sea-state information for the “inside waters”.

We’ve never experienced weather in Fury Cove demonstrating how it earned its name.  It could have been renamed “Idyllic Cove” on the this day. One advantage to anchoring here, in addition to being fairly close to Cape Caution, is that you can look out onto Fitzhugh Sound and south toward Queen Charlotte Sound, to see what is happening.

When we took Dinghy ashore, dozens of sand pipers were busily dining in a small lagoon, blissfully unaware of A Poodle about to launch herself off Dinghy.  Allie chased and splashed.  Sandpipers took off.  Allie took off.  Sandpipers returned.  Allie returned.  Allie chased and splashed. Sandpipers took off.  Each time, fewer returned.  

Stalking.

Chasing was not working and the objects of the game were diminishing at an alarming rate.
 Time to change tactics.

Soon there were no more returning birds.  But, who cares!  We’ve got

Dogzz to share the beach with.  (No, that is not Doug and that is not Dinghy although it is the same brand and probably same outboard.  That was a frequent occurance.)

The size of the driftwood tells you how Fury Cove got its name.

All the white shell beaches on the coast, and there are many of them, are “kitchen middens” created by the First Nations people before Europeans came upon the scene.  Seafood shells piled up over hundreds of years indicating places where the people had their summer camps or permanent settlements.

Doug and I are tend to be minimalists, but we have occasionally fallen for “cruising enhancements”——gadgets that are advertised to make life easier.  

Last year’s enhancement was an Easy Moore designed to make it easier to get a line through  a mooring buoy ring from a high bow. It has a device on the end of a boat hook pole that somehow threads the line through the ring on the buoy.  It worked. Three times.  We were thrilled.  And then, at Montague Harbor, something Went Terribly Wrong.  Doug had to remove the boat hook from the device with pliers and use our three foot long wire cutters to the device off the buoy ring.

Not as advertised....

This year’s Gotcha!  was the Anchor Buddy.  It prevents you from having your dinghy left high and dry on an outgoing tide. Or so we thought. The Anchor Buddy consists of a length of bungie cord with a clip on either end.  Cost:  10% of a Boat Unit.  Purchase  a small mushroom anchor to clip to one end of the line. Cost: 2.5% of a Boat Unit. This assumes you already have one anchor for the dinghy.  Otherwise, buy two.  Purchase an extra long  line for the bow.  We opted to buy a new dinghy tow line that we needed anyway:  Cost 12.5% of a boat unit.

Did you add all that up?  We didn’t.  But it’s worth it to make sure the dingy is not left high and dry on an outgoing tide, right?

The theory is:  when you are about 50 feet from the beach, you drop the scrunchy Anchor Buddy line with one anchor attached. Other end of the line is clipped to the stern of the dinghy. Proceed to the beach.  Take the bow line and the other anchor ashore, leaving plenty of loose line.  Dinghy will be pulled back by the scrunched line to hover in deep water over the anchor you dropped 50 feet from shore, safe from the outgoing tide.  When you return, Dinghy will be floating freely in deep water.  Pull on the shore line, bringing the dinghy to you, embark, and return to the Mother Ship.

We decided to try out the Anchor Buoy in Fury Cove.  

Waiting for the tide to come in is similar to watching paint dry.  

We sat on the shore and tried to will the tide to come in far enough

 to float our boat, that was resting comfortably in a few inches of water.  

Obviously, there is a learning curve.  We think it has to with the beach gradient.  Fury Cove’s beach is very shallow.  Anchor Buddy is not a write-off.  Yet.

With lovely scenery and weather, we couldn’t complain about being “stranded".

We shared Fury Cove with about a dozen other boats, 

representing the Inside Passage cruising community

With a good wind and “sea state” forecast for Queen Charlotte Sound, 

(West Sea Otter buoy:  1.2 meters) Greywolf departed at first light on 

August 11th to round Cape Caution.

Destination:  Port Hardy

Kadushdish Harbor and Ocean Falls.

We discovered Kadushdish Harbour on July 22nd while looking for a place to hide from forecasted disgusting weather.  We find some of our favorites spots doing this.  In Kadushdish, we got rain, but minimal wind and wave action: both items to be avoided for those of us who like to sleep while at anchor. 

The little cabin in on a small First Nations Reserve 
that occupies part of the harbour.

Kadushdish earned high marks on our Anchorage Rating System: 

safe anchorage,  

places for Allie walkies even at high tide,

within dinghy distance of Shearwater for laundry, 

and Bella Bella for groceries. 

Bella Bella was five miles away straight through the opening to the harbour.  We could see the lights of the village at night.

Waiting for forecast storm.  

Greywolf  is the small dot on the right. 

Kadushdish Harbour protected us from the strong winds, but was unable to do much about the rain.

What we do when it rains.   

Doug and Allie are reading All the Light You Cannot See.  

Highly recommend.

Loons were numerous, but shy. ‘Weren’t too interested 
in being photographed.

After the rain, the play.

Loverly sunsets were another benefit of our safe anchorage.

 Interesting rocks, eh?

Before we left BI, we bought two crab pots.  We bought Jean a new fishing rod and reel.  In Sidney, we bought Jean a BC fishing license.  Leaving Kadushdish, headed for Ocean Falls, we stopped to fish for bottom fish for the crab pots.  Doug found the perfect spot for me to catch crab bait.

The “falls" at Ocean Falls, were replaced by this dam in 1912.  The pulp and paper mill it supported are gone, but the dam now supplies electricity to Bella Bella and Denny Island.  

Our cruising guide describes Ocean Falls as a lively ghost town.  All of the buildings in this photo except the pink and white one on the left are abandoned.  "Pink and white" houses the post office (open five days a week) and a few apartments.

Why do we keep going back?  Probably for the same reason as the other ten to fifteen other pleasure boaters at the dock:  good water, good docks, interesting people, roads for people and dog walkies, and good crabbing.

You might have visited with us last year, but don’t go away.  Something has actually changed, other than the annual rot and decay.

Last January, a massive landslide closed the road between Ocean Falls and the small community of Martin Vally.  Heavy equipment was brought in (from where???) to clear the rubble. 

The rocks, mud, and trees missed the telephone poles. Fortunately no cars were parked alongside the road at the time of the slide.

Fifty years ago, almost to the day, a landslide destroyed an apartment house in the same area, killing seven people.   I think that fewer than seven people live in all of Ocean Falls now, excluding the workers at the hydro plant.  (In the ’50’s, 3,500 people lived in Ocean Falls.) About 25 people live in the area year round, most of them in Martin Valley, a mile down the inlet.

We were told that when the BC government decided to sell the houses in Martin Valley (in the ’80’s, maybe?), they were asking  $5000 for houses with no moss (on the inside) and  $2000 for houses with moss (on the inside).  I’m sure they all had moss on the outside.  

Curious about current prices we looked on-line:
Three bedrooms. Close to boat launch ramp.  $100,000. 

Everything is Martin Valley is close to the boat launch ramp.
We did not make an offer. 

We’d been in Ocean falls a few days when, can you believe it?  A storm  arrived.  Doug helped this Nordhavn motor-sailer tie up in about 20 knots of wind.   The wind and rain stayed fairly steady (20-25 knots) all morning.   Late afternoon brought 35 knots and  RAIN.  Ocean Falls' yearly rainfall is measured in double-digit feet. 

OLD PEOPLE CRUISING:   When we were younger, we were inspired by some of the Senior Citizens we met cruising.  If they can do it, why couldn't we???  

Because we can’t remember things.  Sticky notes help, but only if you remember that you need to remember:  slack water time for rapids, time of high and low water, chart numbers, (sometimes the chart plotter goes wiggy-wiggy).  And we also have check-sheets for getting underway, docking, anchoring, getting out of bed….

Sticky notes can’t do it all.  I looked for Mr. Panasonic Camera before I took Allie out for her evening walk on the day of The Rain.  No Mr. Panasonic.  Not to worry, The Little People often hide things.  On the walk, I replayed the day’s events.  When did I last have the camera?  In Dinghy setting the crab pots. 

I found a naked (no case!) Mr. Panasonic shivering in the rain on Dinghy's seat next to my grab-the-crab gloves. We had planned to check the crab pots in the evening, but rescheduled for morning because of the rain and winds. 

Poor Mr. Panasonic.  I took out his battery and chip and put him on a towel to drain and dry. The next morning, he was ready to go.  He is, however, refusing to go crabbing Ever Ever again.  

‘Had to bail out Dinghy before we went to bed.  

We were afraid the battery might be underwater if we 

waited ’til morning.

Mr. Panasonic got a work-out the morning after The Rain.

Dirt and small rocks had clogged the culvert.  The road was flooded, but not impassable. We did seriously question the usefulness of the black plastic tacked to sticks on the side of the road.

After two days of rain, mist greeted us, and then more beautiful days for crabbing.  We paid for the BC fishing license with the crabs, but, for some reason never took the time to fish on the trip.

Jack, the 120 pound eighteen month old white lab, wanted to play.  Allie declined.  He belongs to the couple who own the Darke Waters Inn.  They bought the Inn a few years ago just before logging in the area came to an end.  The income from the loggers, the major income source, disappeared.  The roof of the 23 room inn is disappearing under blue plastic tarps. 

The Inn is for sale for $299,000, if you’d like to make an offer.

We think this sign is from the last century.

Ocean Falls is the only place on our trip where we 

saw a bi-lingual stop sign. Granted, we didn’t see all that  many stop signs.  This is the entrance to the power plant.

On August 9th, Greywolf left Ocean Falls for the second time,   heading south down Cousins Inlet for Cape Caution and Vancouver Island.