A Canadian Adventure - Day 11

Sunday 13 August 2017

An 'Archipelago Cruise'

On their visit two years ago, Robert, Lyn and Louise had enjoyed their day cruising with Alan and Toddy as much as any other on their holiday. So Sue and I cashed another gold bar and set off for a 9.40 am rendezvous at the harbour.

The Raincoast Maiden, a 53ft Canoe Cove motor yacht, was fully subscribed today with over twenty passengers. There was plenty of room for everyone on this grand tour to the Broken Group Islands and back. It was a luxurious trip with a gourmet lunch. Today's passengers were American and Canadian, plus half a dozen from Italy, a German family and a chap from London being the only other Brit on board.

We headed off briskly after Alan's safety briefing as Toddy had spotted a black bear on a nearby beach. It was oblivious to our presence as we watched it turning over rocks in a search for crabs.

We then continued past numerous points of interest:

• Bald eagles - there are apparently around 170 nests in the vicinity, so no shortage of sightings of these beauties. We watched one of them eating a fish on a rocky bluff
• A raccoon on an island - one of a family of three who live there
• Frozen tuna being offloaded from a small fishing boat - the authorities here have a firm hand in ensuring that fishing is sustainable, with a 'no throwback' policy that seems to work
• A scarecrow to keep sealions off a jetty (their weight might destroy it)
• Harbour seals
• Californian sealions. These are smaller sealions that we saw in the water. The cruise would normally visit some larger Steller sealions, but the crossing to the reef where they live was too rough in today's brisk westerly
• Kelp forests. Sea urchins eat the kelp, which is like giant oarweed that grows up to two feet a day, up to about 20 metres.
• Sea otter, on its back, chomping on a sea urchin that it was bashing with a stone. Kelp forests are proliferating where sea otters - once persecuted so that none remained in the area - have returned to feed on the sea urchins that eat the kelp
• Red-breasted mergansers, guillemots, common murres, oyster catchers (here they are black with red beaks) and numerous other sea and shore birds

• No whales. We looked for them but this was not a whale watching trip although it often encounters whales, who today must have been further out to sea - beyond our range.
 
It was a lovely 64 km trip in sunny weather, after last night's rain had cleared the atmosphere sufficiently to see a bit more detail in the nearby hills than the grey outlines we've been seeing to date.

The cruise lasted from 10 am to 3.30 pm, after which a trip to the Co-op provided us with the ingredients for a tasty salad and a strawberry croissant.

It was a lovely afternoon. We returned to the 'Lighthouse Circuit' - the section of the Wild Pacific Trail that we walked in over two hours yesterday morning. This time we chose the opposite direction which must be flatter, as it took us less than half an hour to cover the 4.6 km.

That left us plenty of time to laze in the sun on the bench outside our chalet, edit the day's pictures, enjoy a leisurely sauna/meal, and catch up with some correspondence before a further immersion in our giant bath.

Today's pictures are in chronological order as usual, all taken on or before the cruise, apart from the bottom three, two of which were taken on the Lighthouse Loop to show how much conditions for photography have improved since yesterday.

2 km of walking, 64 km boat cruising and a 4.6 km run in 27.30.