Left Port Hardy Friday morning. Good weather. The boat, now with five crew members, bustled with activity, anticipation and humor. As we crossed Goletas Channel the first of the ocean swells lifted our little hull. Besides the constant cooking of meals the trip to Bull Harbor on Hope Island was uneventful.
Large sheer cliffs covered one side of the Channel entrance, and one could see caves in the rock face. I could hear the sound of water sucking at an entrance of an unseen cave. Trees seemed to grow right out of the wall, and just above the tide line a neon moss grew abundantly. There was a small settlement around the bay, but we made our way to a small dock already half occupied by a small fishing boat.
There were bald beagles, a lot of them. This time I felt like I was in the eagles environment as opposed to one we shared. As the sun fell, small fish fed on the surface and it looked like raindrops on the water.
Rick and Adam slept . The rest of us boiled eggs. While at dock, Markus slept in the bow while Greg and I threw on dry suits and immersion suits and curled up on the dock to sleep. After our training experience in the life raft three weeks ago, we felt that this layering technique would provide plenty of insulation. We were wrong. It was freezing. At three a.m., we traded places with Rick and Adam. Later that morning they rowed us out over Nahwitti bar (a navigational challenge) and except for ocean swells, the crossing was uneventful.
Each time I saw these swells at perhaps six feet at most, I pulled out the camera and tried to capture it. My feeling was that it just can’t be done well on the boat. From the trough or the crest, the movement of the swell just seems to appear as more or less water in the picture and the incredible ease at which the ocean moves us, and everything in it, just can’t be captured. The swells are easy and so is the rowing. Cape Scotts is not too far away, we should be well around it by this Saturday evening.