15 Aug 22

When we woke up about 09:00, it was completely socked in by heavy fog. This, however, lifted within an hour. John’s new batteries held a charge all night long, so we did not have to listen to his engine running for two hours this morning. This pleasure was tempered by the fact that the tuna fishing boat next door ran his generator all night long to keep his freezer cold, sigh. After breakfast, John and I got a ride into Port Hardy with a young First Nations lady who works at the government dock next door. We stopped at Stryker Marine and bought a few things for the boat, including a new hinge set for the forward toilet seat (although, frankly, my Heath Robinson back up using webbing straps has worked so well, I’m a little bit reluctant to change it out). Then, we stopped by the hardware store, where I bought a 1/2” x 3” long brass nipple for the transom shower; if it fits, I won’t be breaking this any time soon. For lunch, we had a salmon burger and chips from a food truck across the street from the visitor information center. Then, we stopped by BC liquor, where I bought an 8-pack of beer and a couple of bottles of wine, followed by a stop at Napa, where I found an infra-red temperature gauge. Finally, we stopped in the grocery store, where I bought some strawberries and a 4-pack of Fever Tree tonic water. The 15:40 bus for Coal Harbour pulled up out front of the store a few minutes later; we were back in Coal Harbour by 16:20. After unloading all our stuff, I had a quick tour of the Air Cab Museum, which is a private collection of RCAF memorabilia (from when this place was an RCAF float plane base during WWII, an incredible collection of chain-saws, a Model T and Model A, both in excellent condition, and a set of jaw bones from a blue whale (these are about 12 feet long), from the days after the war, when this place was a whaling station (they took about 10,000 whales during a 12 year period until Canada finally stopped commercial whaling in 1957). Just before 17:00, we got going, stopped at the other dock long enough to re-fill our forward water tank, then departed Coal Harbour for Varney Bay, which is only 3.5 miles away at the mouth of the Marble River, stopping briefly along the way to check that the prawn trap was still where we left it (it was, but we decided to let it soak for another day). We were anchored in the NE nook by 18:45.

50-33.355’N, 127-31.707’W; Log = 3.5; Sum = 639.6; Eng. hrs. = 1.9, Sum = 3006.4

16 Aug 22

It rained a bit during the night, but the dawn was fine, with high partly cloudy, but the wind was light. We hung around the boat until after LW at 11:20 and did a few boat chores. I flew my drone, for the first time in a month, to reconnoitre the entrances to the Marble River. After LW we loaded into the dinghies and rowed over to the Marble River estuary to look for the mouth of the river. We made it to the top of the estuary about 12:15, but encountered a rapid we could not get past, so we disembarked to the shingle island and had lunch. I estimated that we had to wait until about 14:15 for the tide to come up enough to flood the rapid; we actually made it through at 14:00 and rowed another 1/2 mile up to the next rapid. We waited for another 1/2 hour and the tide came up enough to slow this one down that we could make it up. Then, we rowed another 1/2 mile or so until we hit another rapid, where we pulled out once again. This one flowed into a deep undercut in the cliff just below, which was amazing. There was a nice deep pool above this rapid and Laurie, John and I all went for a swim in lovely, cool fresh water. After another 1/2 hour or so, this rapid, too, flooded enough that we were able to muscle our way up it, although John and I took our respective dinghies up solo and picked up the Admirals on the high side. Another 1/4 mile or so and we ran up against our final rapid; this one was falling 1.5 m and there was not enough tidal rise left to flood this one - although maybe at extreme spring tides. So, we clambered over the rocks alongside the rapid and looked upstream and wondered what was up there to be discovered. We also watched 4 or 5 eagles hunting in the river from the tops of trees on either side of the river. At 16:20 or so, we decided we had had enough, and Captains Hour was calling, so we boarded the dinghies and headed back downstream. It was much easier rowing this way, with the river current pushing us down the slope, until we hit the bay, where a westerly breeze stood between us and the haven of our boats. In the end, it took an hour to row back home, where we arrived tired and hungry at 17:25. Terri and I had nice warm solar showers, followed by cocktails and h’ors d’oeuvres with John and Laurie, followed by dinner. After dinner, we enjoyed a glorious sunset in a nearly cloudless sky. At 20:00, John announced that his (new) batteries were down to 12.07 volts, so he started his engine again. We managed to enjoy a “quiet” evening in spite of the racket of the engine running.