Pictures and prawns

Tuesday, July 2, 2024

We intrepid travelers arrived in a cove on Nettle Island in the Broken Group in the afternoon, having taken a detour after leaving Pipestem Inlet to meander through a cluster of fascinating islands called the Pinkertons. In the morning, Martin and Karen had taken Coracle up Lucky Creek in Pipestem Inlet to some waterfalls and returned having spotted a frog and taken many fine photos. Neither of them were feeling well, however, so they took long naps while Walt and I read and I worked on a blog post. By mid-afternoon, the clouds were dissipating, both Martin and Karen were feeling much better, and we raised our anchor and motored away to tour more of the islands in the Broken Group.

We’d had no luck catching crabs in our trap, so Martin decided to try for prawns. He reconfigured the trap for prawn-catching and added appropriate bait (including canned cat food), and lowered it over Braesail’s port side when Walt, who had used a charting feature to map the sea bottom and find an appropriate prawning “shelf,” stopped the boat and Karen and Martin let the trap, its bright-pink spherical float, and about 450 feet of line down over the side into a little over 200 feet of water. Walt marked a way-point on his chart so that we’d be able to locate the trap float when leaving Nettle Island.

It wasn’t far from our trap deployment location to the anchorages around Nettle Island. We found several powerboats already there and spotted the park ranger’s floating cabin.

As we were searching for a safe anchoring spot, we heard a Coast Guard call for assistance for a 22-ft. open sailboat that had lost engine power not far from Ucluelet and had no wind for sailing. We realized that we’d seen that lovely wooden boat with maroon sails moored a little way behind Braesail at the dock in Ucluelet! We were too far away to render assistance, and I prayed that, of the many boats in the Ucluelet area, one would come to the rescue.

We found a good spot in which to “drop hook,” and enjoyed a gloriously sunny late afternoon and evening in yet another lovely anchorage surrounded by forests, rock clusters, islets, bushy islands, and a stream or two. After supper, Martin and Karen took their camera gear and motored in Coracle around the shores of the anchorage. They took wonderful photos of the softly fading evening light, and found the mouth of a stream lined with rocks and overhung with branches where Martin waded over the stones and into the pleasantly warm water to get JUST the shots he wanted. Walt read and researched tides, currents, weather, and anchorages as he planned for our upcoming journey to Victoria or Sidney, BC, while I cleaned the galley after Karen and Martin had made us a terrific supper, and worked on French and a blog post.

The photo-expedition team returned shortly after the sun had set and shared some of their splendid pictures. We finished our day with some games of “Big Two, and enjoyed a late snack of pieces of baklava accompanied by our beverages of choice. We trundled off to bed, wondering if there would be any prawns in our trap when we raised it in the morning!