Canadian heros

1st Mates Log
July 10th, 2008
Tracy Harbour, Napier Bay
North Broughton Island
BC Canada

Is that Bear Musk? Or just Ken?
Sailing is a lot like camping, in that you don’t always get to take a shower when you want to. Truth be told, Ken is much more of a got-to-take-a-shower-everyday person than I am, since I only break a sweat when the temperature hits about 80 degrees. Since we are above the 50th parallel and over the water, the only spot that comes close to 80 degrees is the engine room. Nevertheless, after a week or so even I enjoy a hot shower. We have a solar shower, which is a 5 gallon bag that is clear on one side and black on the other. Off the coast of BC it takes nearly all day to heat up to a decent temperature. But sailors don‘t ‘waste‘ precious drinking water on showers. Since we don’t go to marinas very often, we are always on the look out for a freshwater creek to fill our solar shower with. As we motored the dinghy around Napier Bay, we were disappointed that we didn’t see any creek outflows. The shower would have to wait for another day.
“Napier Bay has good holding but watch for the submerged pipeline that crosses the anchoring ground” said the guide book. There were already two boats anchored, one a power boater and the other a sloop. The sloop had 2 fishing lines out on either side, but we carefully motored around him as he was near where we wanted to drop our anchor. There sat a peaceful gray haired gentleman reading in the cockpit. “Excuse me,” Ken hailed him, “do you know where the pipeline is situated? There’s no indication on the chart.” The man briefly looked up from his book and said “No, don’t.”
Now most boaters we have met, especially Canadians, have been friendly with advice and eager to engage in the fine and tricky art of anchoring (see Anchoring 101-104). “He must be having a bad day” I told Ken, but I mentally wrote him off as Not A Very Nice Canadian. We anchored without any assistance from the Crabby Canadian, and headed out into the dinghy to see what there was to see.
Before we left, a couple on a power boat motored over. “Do you have any dogs?” I heard them say from down below. My interested was piqued and I ran on deck.
“No,” Ken said, “Why?”
“We went to take our dogs ashore to do their duty and standing just above the shore, was a wolf!” the woman exclaimed. “We just wanted to warn you in case you had any dogs, just to be aware.”
“Thanks for the warning,” Ken said, with a smirky smile on his face. I looked down into their dinghy and saw the reason for his reaction: there in the bottom of their boat was not one, not two, but FOUR bite sized dogs, all with little red top knot ribbons in their hair! I smiled and remembered that I had had a brief encounter with them in Port McNeill. The man was walking two of the dogs, and I smiled cordially after him. I turned around and then saw her, some distance away, with 2 of the identical breed of dog. She looked at me and said, “We look like we’re together don’t we”, to which I responded “Either that or you just met the man of your dreams!”
Ken and I weren’t so sure about the wolf story, but we logged the possibility of wolves with the known threat of bears.
All of these islands have been subject to logging in the past, but North Broughton Is still being logged. This worked to our advantage though, because there were logging roads to hike on. The forest on either side was impenetrably dark. It had been several days since Ken and I had been able to walk around on shore much at all, and we were somewhat boat weary. “I wonder where they’re going to take their wolf food for a walk”, Ken said showing his most genuine dog lover side.

“How far do you want to hike?” Ken asked me. He wanted to continue on down the road, which was getting narrower and narrower, but I’d come about as far as I wanted, and felt a bit wary of going farther. As we walked farther down the now path wide road, I felt more and more uneasy. ‘I smell something bad!” I said to Ken. “It’s not me” he said.
“I don’t like this, it doesn't feel right” I said, and immediately saw a bear sized area that had been bear flattened, and there was fresh bear scat ahead. “Let’s go back.” We then saw bear tracks, and right next to them, cat tracks, as big as my palm. And right next to them, wolf tracks!

Back at the landing, was a shiny red box with Chinese writing on it , like a chocolate confectioner’s chocolate candy box, but it had abear claw sized hole in the middle of it. Next to it was the molded plastic tray from inside,which had a most unusual offering: several 10 milliliter vials of ginseng and Royal Jelly! The labels were only very slightly faded, and almost all of them were completely intact. Chinese timber fallers? Souped up bears?

Looking on the dock where we parked the dinghy, I saw a black pipe coming up from the sea floor, up and over the dock and hanging over the end. There were lots of rolls of black pipe lying around, but this one had water dripping out of it, clear fresh water, solar shower water!

We dinghied back to the boat, and Ken noted that the wind generator had been powering up a storm. “We have to use up some of that power” he said. That may sound silly to those who have always received electric bills, but if the wind charger completely charges the batteries, the power has to be wasted or the batteries will blow up (I guess). What did we need to do that would use up a bunch of power? “ I think I’ll vacuum,” he said. Sure enough, when he turned on the Dirt Devil, it drew 12 amps! After I marveled at the ampere gauge awhile (cheap boat fun) I stepped out on deck to shake out the rugs, when the power boaters with the wolf bait doggies honked their horn at us, and pointed down wind. I turned and looked, and there was a sight you never want to see: about 300 yards aft of the boat was our dinghy! “Holy Toledo, what happened?!” I said.
“Those three half hitches I always tie came loose because of the wave action I guess,” Ken answered. Well thank heaven that 1) we weren’t the only people in the bay, and 2) the wind pushed it in to the cove and not out into the straight. That would have been a super bummer.
Remember that Crabby Canadian? I take it all back. He wasn’t crabby, just...quiet, simply…introspective, only wanted to be left alone. He and his lovely wife had gotten into their dinghy and rescued ours. Even introverts like to play the hero.
We sat in the cockpit after a dinner of crab (I haven’t written my crab story yet), pineapple coleslaw and brownies, and a nightcap of ginseng royal jelly. We considered that it probably had been another good day not to be working. I realized that Ken would likely never smell as bad as a bear, Canadians have big hearts, and surely we would never have to learn any more lessons that involved the dinghy!