Day 19

After sending the night surprisingly well in the deep, calm waters of Kutze Inlet, dad and I woke up at the usual early morning time and were under way by 5:25am, after eating a hearty breakfast of eggs and bacon. At least today it was only raining a little, with light intermittent drizzle as opposed to yesterday’s downpour, but nonetheless it took a huge effort of will to put all those layers of still-damp rain gear and head leave the warm confines of the cabin.

Outside, we were once more impressed by the sheer mountainsides dropping into the water on either side, an effect that was heighted by the fact that we could actually see all the way to the top, unlike yesterday when the cliffs had ended in thick clouds seemingly just above the masthead. For a few hours of the morning we had this last reminder of staggering natural forces and beauty, then we left Graham reach and the channel widened out as the mountains either side became less steep and lost much of their majesty.

During the day, we had some intermittent wind from astern and so were constantly raising and lowering the sails, never being able to actually shut off the engine, and after the cliffs dropped away the most interesting thing was the water. All that day, and some of yesterday we had been seeing huge patches of what we could only guess was masses of bright orange algae at every tide line, discoloring the water to such an extent that it sometimes appeared that we were sailing through thick tomato soup, and when we looked astern we could see the straight line of our wake cutting a dark scar through the growth. After only a relatively short day of eight hours, we pulled into Hartley Bay, a small native fishing town where we planned to refill the gas tanks and hopefully get access to some dryers for our heaps of soaking clothes.

Unfortunately, when we walked u to the harbormaster to get gas, she very kindly told us that there were no showers or even a Laundromat in town! After that, dad and I just wandered around town a bit bleakly until we ended u back at the marina, just to check one last time and make absolutely certain that there was no mistake, and while I went to the boat, dad asked the harbormaster one last time, and lo and behold, she remembered that someone in town used to offer showers and laundry and so she called him up for us to make sure he was still doing it. Fifteen minuets later, we had gathered up all of the laundry into a big duffel and brought it over to Wally’s house along the boardwalk street. Wally greeted us at the house, and after a luxurious hot shower and with the laundry tumbling away in the basement, we fell to chatting with our soft-spoken but friendly benefactor.

Wally had been born and raised in Hartley bay, working as a carpenter and fisherman, in fact he had built the large house we were currently sitting in and though he was in his seventies, the only reason he had stopped working was because of his Parkinson’s. In the end I had to go back down to the boat to pug in the heater, but Wally ended up giving us a huge slab of halibut he had before we left.