March 8, 2005 Port Hardy to Walker Island Cove Day 8
Today began in the dredges and ended in supreme perfection. A cold, hard rain thundered down on the deck. Modulus had accumulated 6 inches of water in her by morning. It was the kind of rainy day that makes you think it will remain like it is forever. We had another round of errands in town, which we did as quickly as possible. Christoph and I serviced the engine, replaced the oil and the crankcase oil. She purrs now, of course. It feels good to have a well-maintained engine, especially with as much motoring as we’ve had to do! And with that, and to our relief, we purred out of the harbour. In the rain. Christoph sniffed out a little wind and raised the sails, but it soon got flukey and we had to motor again. Our destination for the evening was God’s Pocket, which I have used in the past and it is a great jumping-off point for the open-ocean crossing into northern B.C. To my despair, the good old mooring buoys in the bay had been removed! We moored to a derelict dock on shore but were soon forced to leave, near sundown, by the caretaker, who showed no interest in talking to me. As we left, the skies cleared and we made a short jump out into the middle of the straight, to the Walker Island group. It was low tide and we moored to a buoy in the bay, which was new since I’d been there last. You lose a buoy here, you gain a buoy there, it all works out, I guess. Christoph, Lee and I explored the bay as the day’s first and last rays of sun set over the tops of the old-growth cedar. The marine life blew us all away. Every inch of rock was chuckablock with giant tubeworms, starfish of all colors, barnacles as big as baseballs, irridescent seaweeds and a billion other forms of life that were just as hard to believe as they would be to describe in this journal. Modulus has been on some fantastic rowing expeditions, and this was one of her finest. In the evening we became ambitious and produced the best deep-dish pizza–cooked in a skillet over the wood stove–that we ever had. “The best pizza” as Christoph says, “without a doubt”. We enjoyed our pizza with a bottle of wine, and toasted to the sea and the continuing good fortune we have encountered on the voyage.
