Day 28 - Kwatsi Bay to Port Neville

For the first time in a while, we were out of bed at the crack of dawn. Time has brought us to the place where we need to think about our journey back home, and we want to maintain this year’s agenda of not being rushed. We want to take our time getting home so that we’re not all flustered by the time we get there.

Today’s journey took us back into the Johnstone Strait. Because the current and the winds are so strong through here, we ensured that we got to our destination before high tide at 3:00 PM. We hauled up the prawn trap just outside of Kwatsi Bay, and were pleased to see a small cache of about 10 shrimp and about 5 small tiger prawns. These tiger prawns were nothing like the lobster-sized ones we were served in Singapore, but they were tiger prawns nonetheless. We enjoyed them in a creamy pasta sauce for dinner.

We made our way through Tribune channel between Gilford Island and the coastal mainland, then crossed Knight Inlet to Chatham Channel. Once we passed through there we were back into Johnstone Strait. The winds were a-blowing, and we were able to hoist the geniker again and kill the motors for a while to coast along on nature’s power alone. This is such a satisfying feeling; to move at a decent pace while burning no fossil fuels at all.

We dropped the prawn trap again just outside of the entrance to Port Neville, then continued along looking for a place to drop the hook. The wind was quite strong at this point, and we needed to find a secure place where we wouldn’t get blown to shore. Our guide book suggested anchoring around a point of land called Robber’s Knob, but when we got there it seemed to have almost no protection at all. Robber’s Knob just wasn’t big enough to get the job done. So we turned the boat around and headed back out, and tucked ourselves into a small cove which seemed to have some decent protection from the winds and chop, despite what our guide book said. With anchor down and anchor bridle securing it in place, we hopped into the dingy to visit the old site.

Port Neville was named by Captain George Vancouver back in 1792. It was the site of the first post office on the west coast of Canada, opening in 1891. The public wharf dates back to the days of the Union Steamship. Once the hub of a bustling community, the land has always been privately owned. Today it is used primarily as a summer cottage for the family that owns it. They have kept the original store as it was (complete with stock from the shelves that is decades old), and have opened it as a museum for folks who come and visit. A full-time caretaker lives there with his cat Bungy, and they gave us a brief tour of the building. Port Neville also hosts some impromptu potluck dinners for boaters, but there were not many folks around when we visited.

Back into the dinghy, and we were pleased to see that the catamaran was exactly where we had left it.

Day 27 - Echo Bay to Kwatsi Bay (coastal mainland)

We said good-bye to Echo Bay and started heading up Tribune Channel in the late morning. The sun was shining again, which helped to warm and dry our bones.

Our first stop was at the Burdwood Group of islands. A beautiful mini-archipelago within the bigger Broughton Archipelago, it was inhabited by the Kwakiutl people for about 8,000 years. The area has a very special feel to it – broken shell beaches, evidence of villages, breath-taking natural surroundings. A wonderland teeming with energy, for sure. This group of 17 islands, islets and grassy rocks housed at least 6 village sites, and one island was used for defensive purposes only. Strategically situated and difficult to climb onto (we found out), villagers would bring food and supplies to the warriors who stayed on this small islet on-watch for attacks from other tribes.

Preserved in the trees and marked by a subtle trail, an ancient cedar which was culturally modified hundreds of years ago still stands. Natives would remove long boards from trees, without causing the tree to fall or even die. This particular tree was special, in that boards had been removed from 2 sides.

Aboriginal people lived all along this coast for thousands of years. That is, until the smallpox epidemic, brought by European fur traders, essentially wiped out the native population in all of British Columbia about 150 years ago. This is a very sad chapter of BC history. People who had been living here since before recorded history, in harmony and balance with nature, could not defend themselves against this virulent disease which they had never been exposed to before. One year (ONE year, from 1862-1863) is all it took for this well established population to be drastically reduced, almost to extinction. And with their decline we lost the profound wisdom that can only come from thousands of years of experience. Perhaps we don’t always realize how fragile we all are – our way of life could change forever in the blink of an eye. Natural disaster, man-made disaster, climate change, pollution, nuclear accident, economic Armageddon, famine, disease – all of these things could bring about the end of the world as we know it, and very quickly. It has happened before, in the not too distant past, it can (and, probably will) happen again. Life is precious, but humans are fragile.

Sorry to leave this magical place after only a few hours, we continued on our way up Tribune Channel. There we found the Lacy Waterfalls running down the wall of the rocky mountainside. We dropped our prawn trap just outside of Kwatsi Bay, which houses a very small marina frequented by the cruisers. Again we opted to anchor instead of pay for moorage, and had to get very close to the shore to find a spot shallow enough for us to have the hook catch. With running streams on the shore, we knew bears were close by, so we made sure to close and lock all the hatches before we went to sleep.