Noah’s Ark.

The big brown cat that was rolling about our deck next to the kitchen window turned out to be an otter. He was drying his fur by rubbing himself with a lot of vigor against our deck. And he then took a nap. We were relieved he wasn’t scent marking O2. (We googled “river otter behavior” and then went sniffing outside when he went fishing. All smelt clean.)The next day Ozzy Otter (more than once, Canadians misread O2’s name and call her OZ, as in the wizard of OZ) hauled his freshly caught flatfish on board and sat happily munching in the pouring rain outside our bedroom window. Until another otter stormed on board and chased Ozzy back into the sea, leaving the scraps of his fish behind. We saw them interacting (playing? fighting?) in the water for quite a while until both of them disappeared in the distance.

What else could we do in this foul April weather but follow Ozzy’s lead. So, we cleaned our wild Mexican blue prawn tails and shoved them in the oven, wrapped in the “Gourmet cedar cooking wraps” we had bought for the occasion. It was finger licking delicious.

On the fourth day of continuous rain thudding on our deck, the noise suddenly stopped and all sound got muffled. It had started to snow.

In between heavy rain and snow showers, Canadians – some of them in shorts while we are all covered up in rain gear – come popping up in the woods like mushrooms, and nearly always accompanied by happy dogs. On Quadra Island, we joined them for a stroll along the shores of the Rebecca Spit where we saw a man carry a huge piece of driftwood back to his car. Another piece of art was about to come to life. The shores of British Columbia are littered with driftwood and runaway logs. An overdose of logs can become quite problematic, both for boats and sea birds. Boats bump into them as they are drifting around and sea birds starve as their food consisting of sea stars and snails gets crushed between the moving logs and the grinding of beach stones. Then again, the right number of logs is beneficial to the seas, because they transport a lot of nutrients from the woods to the water. The way spawning & dying salmon transport nutrients from the water into the woods. We find the circle of life intriguing.

Sheltering from the wind & rain, I spent my time taking pictures, updating the blog, cooking comfort food, and getting more & more engrossed in the epic novel “Alaska” by James A. Michener.  My Captain on the other hand spent his time writing up technical excerpts, eating the comfort food, and delving deep into navigational books and tide tables. The more so as the guy at the fuel station in Heriot Bay had warned us about the “middle route” up North through Whiterock Passage where every year boaters hit rocks as he himself had done so with his shrimp trailer a couple of years ago. 

But my fully prepared Captain navigated O2 and her crew – being just me – safely through all the challenging narrows, rip tides, and tidal passages. The most dangerous thing that happened was when I slipped on the mossy planks of Big Bay on Stuart Island (with very posh fishing lodges still closed for the season) to land headfirst stretched out on the dock with the mooring line still firmly clasped in my hand. In many docking places in British Columbia there are no cleats I can lasso onto from onboard O2, but stupid wooden horizontal bars instead where the mooring line needs to go under and over and under again and consequently gets all messed up and full of splinters. Especially when you are in a hurry while scrambling back from a prone to a kneeling position as your Captain is shouting from up above in the cockpit to speed up please lest O2 be pushed sideways again with the brutal current. 

We have now safely reached Blind Channel Resort on West Thurlow Island where a nice lady gave us a hand as we were docking. With O2 safely tied up, we went singing on the trails in the forest. The first bears are coming out of their hibernation and are therefore rather grumpy, we have been told. And you don’t want to spook them out of their wits by suddenly materializing in front of them. Hence the singing, which is also a kind of whistling in the dark. I have already a whole repertoire that I sing for both of us.

So far, so good.