Summer 2008 - TUE 7/15 - FRI 7/18 - Princess Louisa (Scty)
July 15, 2008
Garden Bay to Princess Louisa Inlet
When we started planning for this trip I knew we had to plan for the Malibu rapids crossing time. From the very start, I found that the slack tide was about 8 PM. This is a fact that will become a little more interesting later on.
We split up the raft up at around 10 am. Ghost slipped out of Pender Harbor with Palarran close a stern.
As we turned up Agamemnon channel there was just enough wind to keep a headsail full, so…up it went. About an hour later we found our first set of native rock paintings.
We were having some fun with a call on the radio that WindDancer started early on in the trip. It went something like this “…attention all vessels listening channel 16….the sailing vessel WindDancer is now showing ZERO fuel burn!” So everytime we turned off the motor, we would make this call. We had been sailing with “fuel burn ZERO” for a few hours. It was going to be a looong day. We had planned on about 8 hours of motoring to get the rapids. We turned the last corner and had only a few miles to go. We had sailed almost the entire trip. Only about 2.5 hours of motoring. Not too bad! At least I didn’t have to worry too much about my heat exchanger. It held up well for the little motoring that we did.
As we all joined up we thought that we had about an hour to wait for slack water at the rapids, Cynthia made a call to us on the radio. She seemed to think that we were an hour off on our….ahem….my slack water figuring. Suddenly, if she was right, we had to really hustle to get to the rapids and still make it through. The reason that this was critical is because it was getting dark and there was no place to go if we missed the slack water time for the rapids. We would know if I was wrong about the time when we got to the rapids. Cynthia was right. Turns out the tide and current tables that I was using was not corrected for daylight savings time. I was an hour off. Close one! Thanks Cynthia!
And then we were there
Princess Louisa Inlet is by far the most breathtaking place that I have ever been. I am humbled by the sight. I am so excited to show this magical place with my kids. Ellie is named after the inlet. Ellie’s middle name is Louisa. We have been to Zak’s name sake, Ried Harbor in the San Juans, many times, but Ellie was very excited to go to “her place”.
Our plan was to drop a dingy in the water and run ahead and search out place for all of us to stay the first night. Cutis jumped into his tender and zoomed the 4 miles ahead to the falls to check out the possibilities. He reported that there were “zero point zero boats anchored below the falls”. Jackpot!
As we slowly motored around the last bend in the inlet, the kids were very interested in seeing a real water fall.
There wasn’t much sunlight left as we set the hook at the base of the falls in 20 feet of water. The current from the falls would keep us positioned off the falls for three days.
It was a long day, but we made it and now we could relax and look around at what we had sailed into.
End of our first day of paradise
July 31, 2008
Everyone was tired from the day before. There was not a cloud in the sky. There was a soft roar from ChatterBox Falls. Zak and mommy went for an early morning sea kayak.
After breakfast we all went ashore and did some exploring. There were lots of photo ops.
We even started out on the trail to the old trapper’s cabin. We made it about 15 min into the 2 hour hike. It was not to be….today at least.
Later that night we planned a midnight dingy float. We loaded up with stocking caps and some warm drinks……at least they felt warm and smooth as they went down.
We let the current from the falls push us slowly out of the inlet. We floated about a mile down the inlet in total darkness. We watched the moonlight brighten the surrounding mountains. It was very cool. At one point we saw a strangely bright rock near the shore that seemed to be glowing?! There was a lot of phosphorescence in the water, or maybe it was a water fall? What else would 4 people in a couple of dingy’s do in a situation like this? Well, we must go and investigate! Slowly we made our way towards the strangely bright rock or what ever it was. As we got closer, Curtis tried to shine his light on it. We still could not make out what it was. We needed to get closer. We could tell, however, that it was sticking out of the water, or floating on the water. It was not on the shore. Interesting. Finally, as we got close enough that our little flashlight could start to see some detail, we saw that it was…..a BOAT! “back away………back away slowly!......shshshhshshh…….it’s creepy guys from the Ozarks!.......back away!
Well, back out in the middle of the inlet, looking up at the stars, we all listened for sounds that the Ozark guys might be coming out to get us. Funny what some rum, scotch, darkness, 600 feet deep water and a lot of imagination can come up with.
End of day two
July 17, 2008
The plan today was to hike to the trappers cabin. The sign said it might be a tough trail. We were ready….well, CB and Tawn were ready, I was not sure if I were ready. Up we go.
I am glad that we did not try to get the kids to go all the way. It was a little tricky in spots. We were ready for the worst and the worst never came. It only took us a little over an hour to get to what was left of the cabin. It had fallen down and had certainly seen better days. It had been built next to a waterfall, and that was spectacular.
Back down to the boat. Ang and the kids took the dingy all the way to Malibu Lodge for a tour. They had a great time.
Christmas in July event happening at Malibu Club youth camp while Ang and the kids were on the tour:
It was decided that maybe we should move a little closer to the rapids so we would not have such a long run in the morning for our departure. It would be another 40 plus miles as we sailed out of the mountains. So we pulled anchor and tied up to the buoys at Macdonald Island, about a mile from the rapids. I didn’t want to leave, but we needed to explore other parts of the Canadian wilderness.
End of the last day in paradise
