Two full days of sailing through BC. Grey, rainy skies but dramatic mountains with fresh snow on the trees. Brr, it’s cold on deck but the vistas are beautiful and though we try, we can never capture the immense grandeur that we are passing through.

Got all your gulls in a row?

The crew provided various diversions, including an excellent presentation on a salmon rearing project in Bella Bella with the First Nations by Will, who has been working on the project for many years. It really brought home how important salmon are both culturally and economically to all of us who live in the region, and how protection of our waters is critical.

Michelle, one of the crew, set up the afternoon activity, which was watercolors. She enjoys painting with watercolors and offered it up to anyone who wanted to try. Well, Tami couldn’t pass up a chance to mess around with colors so she gave it a try. Never having done it before, it was a, well, interesting result. Let’s just say she was seeing how it all worked. And once again, water is our friend, as she found that if you mess up, just put more water on it and it all kind of washes away. She had great fun, though!

Tami’s first watercolor (Mike wanted her to put in an orca)

As nightfall on the first day arrives we are approaching the north end of Vancouver Island and will soon be leaving the protection of the island. The captain says there is ‘interesting’ weather ahead of us and perhaps we might all want to retire early. He hopes we can push through but if it gets too wild we will have to find a protected spot to wait out the weather, but we are really hoping we can get through. So we decided to take his advice after another delicious dinner and we must say, it’s nice to snuggle into our cozy cabin and do some quiet reading. We can feel the swells begin and we wonder, what will the weather bring tomorrow?

The second day we were able to continue sailing north. At one point we stopped to take a look at an old abandoned cannery. We could not get off the ship as we do not have permits for more than just transiting Canada. We had hoped to be able to lower some goodies over the side to the caretaker, but the presence of a government worker there at the same time nixed that.

Cannery

Cannery’s ice cream shop?

Waterfall next to cannery

Tree

In the afternoon we were able to take a tour of the ship galley. NOT like the galley on a big cruise ship. There was just barely room for the four kitchen staff to work. They must bump into each other a LOT. But they produce amazing food from that small galley.

Our chef showing us the kitchen, oops, GALLEY