Lyn's Log, 26th June 2008
Ocean Falls to the Broughtons.

Echo Bay, BC.
N50º45', W126º30'
17,738 miles.

Winter into summer, British Columbia

Ocean Falls, where we arrived on 21st June, is a ghost town. At one time, when the town had a major paper mill, five thousand people lived here, but today there are just 45 permanent residents. The government ordered the town to be razed when it was abandoned in 1980, and most was but some houses, offices and factories remain empty and rotting. It is still in decline. The hydroelectric plant still works, but the dam looks in dangerously poor repair. The bridge across collapsed into the river earlier this year. We saw some recent tiled ruins fallen down a cliff into the river, the only recognisable feature being an incongruous sign “Depth 8 feet” – later we identified this in a faded photograph from the 1920’s of an “Olympic swimming bath built at Ocean Falls, the finest in Canada”. The ‘large and well-stocked’ store where I had hoped to get bread and some other fresh food, is now only open for a couple of hours three days a week, and so badly supplied that even the local residents don’t use it. It was interesting wandering around the deserted buildings, filled with junk abandoned thirty years ago. The 400 room hotel is gutted, the old fire station held nothing but an old boat, there was no sign of the smart looking school or hospital we’d seen in photos, the glass frontage of the liquor store was intact but inside were nothing but ancient empties, and the broken-down bus parked by the ferry dock still bore a faded sign ‘Not in Service’.

Ocean Falls is one of the rainiest places in Canada, with 175 inches per year (compare rainy Plymouth, England, with 45). The town sign says “Home of the Rain People”. On the plus side, it is in an exceptionally beautiful location, backed by unbelievably high sheer granite mountains. The overgrown part of the town site was a riot of colourful wild flowers. Among the dereliction, here and there are houses perfectly maintained, and one church appeared still in use. There was a nice little marina, run by a volunteer, where internet had recently been installed. The town is only accessible by water but the ferry service does still visit once a week throughout the year. Until the dam fails there is no shortage of power. If you fancied getting away from it all, love communing with nature and don’t mind the wet, you could find this the ideal spot. You can buy a large house here ‘in good condition’ for £15,000. (Interested? Try the town website.) For us though I think it is time to continue heading south.

Before we left though, disaster with the crabbing! In the first spot I tried, the bait had not been touched so I dragged the crab pot to another place. In the morning we took the yacht over to winch it up, but the pot was stuck fast on the bottom and the line broke. Is this the end of my ineffectual attempts at crabbing? There was a seal close by where I put the pot down and again in the morning. One of the milk container floats had been bitten leaving several holes in it. What a pity he couldn’t bring up my crab pot for me.

Midsummer’s Day marked a turning point in the weather. What a surprise it was to wake up to a sunny Sunday. Not only that, but it stayed sunny all day. It did rain after that, but never again for days without a break, and it was generally much warmer. And very occasionally the wind was in our favour, enough for us to have a much longed-for sail.

However the next morning’s weather forecast was, as usual, still predicting a south-east gale, so heading out south around Cape Caution, the only part of the journey actually in the open Pacific, did not seem a good idea. Mid morning I suddenly saw the spume of a whale directly ahead of us, followed by a large black hump and then it disappeared for about twenty minutes. I next saw it almost beside us. Several times it just surfaced, first showing the top of its head as it spouted, then along the top of its back and its tiny dorsal fin. Then it arched up its back higher out of the water, followed by its tail and it dove down again, not reappearing again for some time when it was making its way across the channel for someone else to spot him.

We spent much of this day detouring some ten miles up Rivers Inlet to Dawson’s Landing where there was meant to be a small store, as we wanted to buy some fresh food having failed to do so in Ocean Falls. The store though had no fresh milk until delivery day. As prices were high, we only bought coffee and a frozen loaf. The amphibious mailplane came in with some post for the post office while we were there. It looked like a wounded duck floundering in the water. Instead of the usual two floats underneath it has a single float on the underside and a small float on each wing tip. One of these was raised which tipped the plane well over on one side so it could moor alongside at the dock.

As usual the forecast gale did not materialise and we felt rather frustrated having made such a long detour for nothing, but by seven we reached a pleasant anchorage just north of Cape Caution in Smith Inlet. We sat in the cockpit enjoying our scotch and gingers with only a bald eagle for company, and later made a ‘chuck-it-in’ stew from tins.

Porridge for breakfast, made with water and evaporated milk on the top, meant we could keep the remaining fresh milk for tea and coffee. The milk had kept fresh for six days, but we have had the fridge working throughout because we have been motoring so much, keeping the batteries topped up. The morning weather forecast actually dropped all gale warnings! It rained a bit off Cape Caution but once round, there was enough wind on the beam for us to have a really fast sail. We followed along the mainland coast, dotted with many small islets until we reached Blunden Harbour.

First sighting of orcas today. In the early afternoon I spotted some black fins between us and the shore. They were tall, not like the humpback’s fin. There was only a slight spume but nothing else could be seen. Later on I saw another whale, though probably not an orca. It is exciting sailing with the whales. We reached Blunden Harbour, behind Robinson Island, about fifteen miles from Broughton Island, at six and anchored off a beach where there had been a native village until 1930. There were many small Indian villages in the region that were abandoned around this time, as their traditional way of life finally collapsed. Our pilot guide said there were some interesting remains, but when we explored there is hardly anything left to see, apart from signs of recent excavation. Already it has become the stuff of archeologists, ancient history. It was a beautiful spot though.

There was a real bite to the wind next morning, but we managed to sail on and off until we reached the maze of islands and waterways of the Broughton Marine National Park. As we approached, the sun came out with a vengeance and it got so hot we were stripping off layers. We decided to take a more or less direct route through to Echo Bay on the other side. This meant taking some very narrow passages through. By keeping the long streams of thick weed between us and the shore, we crept through without any problems, and seemed to be a lot deeper than our chart indicated. It was a lovely area for pottering about exploring, yet surprisingly there was nobody else around.