S.V. CAMBRIA

Along with good days and bad days on the water, there are places you choose and places that choose you: Pender Harbour is a little bit of both. We first came here three years ago for the Jazz Festival and, little by little, have fallen in love with this small, but vibrant community. And even though we were both loathe to leave the comfort of Desolation Sound, even if only for a few days, it'sgood to be back.

It rained Friday night so Saturday's music was moved from the outdoor venues located at the different resorts along the water to theCommunity Hall. Normally that would be a great disappointment, but not this year. Although we'd planned to go listen to several of the bands, it's getting too cold on the boat in the mornings and David wanted to reinstall the newly repaired heating fan first. It should have only take a couple of hours but turned into a four hour ordeal complete with phone calls to Lance, the installer, down in Victoria. But a job well done is one worth doing and, even though we missed the bulk of the festival, we have heat again!

Later that night (much, much later at 9:00 pm) we met Gary and Tani at the Community Centre for the Fathead concert, a blues band out of Toronto. The centre was packed with people ready to enjoy anight out and they filled the dance floor from start to finish –Gary even managed to drag me and my two left feet out for a song. It had been a long day for everyone, so we said our good-byes close to midnight (before the end of the concert) and dinghied home in the rain.

The rain cleared out today and we went to the Garden Bay Pub in the afternoon for the open jam session with Gaetan Bergevin, a blues musician out of nearby Gibsons, and were treated to a couple of songs with Doc Fingers (the name says it all) and Bradley McKillivray, an incredible singer (Ruth McKillivray) who excels in giving emotional performances in the same vain as Bonnie Raitt or Janis Joplin backed up by her Fender playing husband (Sheldon Bradley). The set ended after a few hours and it was back to the boat to walk the dog and pile on extra layers for an evening up the hill at the Grasshopper Pub.

By the time we arrived, the pub was packed but we managed to find a spot on the deck overlooking the water and Cambria at anchor. We had dinner before Santa Lucia, a Cuban Jazz band out of Vancouver, started to play but didn't stay long -- it's just not our type of music and, unlike the band that came directly from Cuba last year, they weren't that good. Whether several others agreed with us or not, the crowd thinned out after the first set and we were among the early departures. Tempted to go back to Garden Bay Pub to listen to Doc Fingers, we were both just too tired from a very busy three days and went home to a warm boat.

British Columbia Music Festival the Inside Passage

Pender Harbour Jazz Festival

Friday, September 16, 2011TheCambrians

There are good days and bad days on the water. Whenever you sail to a schedule, you greatly increase the chances that you'll see a bad one. And today was one of those days.

It started off inauspiciously when we were raising the anchor which kept tripping out the winch making me wonder if we were fouled on an old piece of logging equipment left in the water to rust away. We'd pull in a few metres and it would stop from the added strain. David would go below decks, flip the breaker, and we'd try again only to have it stop after a few more metres. But eventually the anchor came up clean – most likely just getting hung up in the crevices of rocks – and we carried on.

Things looked more promising as we exited the anchorage to a calm day on the water -- hardly a breath of air. The tide wasn't in our favour, but we still saw a slight push from a back eddy and the trip down to Westview, where we stopped to re-provision, was short. Arriving by 10 o'clock, David had his list and I had mine. I made my way up “Cardiac Hill” to buy groceries while he brought the leaking core from the heater fan to a radiator shop to see if it could be re-sautered to save us buying a new one and pick up some things from the local chandler. We both finished by one o'clock (with a repaired core in hand) and were on our way again - things were really falling into place – but, by this time, the wind had started to pick up from the southwest …as forecasted.

By two o'clock, it was a sloppy ride with one metre, moderate seas. The wind was only blowing 13 knots (right on our nose) but Malaspina Strait looked like a washing machine with waves stacked up one after the other. As we climbed up one wave, we'd crash down into the trough of the next one making the boat feel more like a hobby-horse than a sailing vessel. Neither one of us are prone to sea-sickness, but if we were, today would have been the day. It was enough to rattle your teeth and tempt us into stopping off at Ballet Bay for the night. But with only eight more nautical miles to go, we carried on. I can honestly say the entrance to Pender Harbour, and the flattening of the sea, was a very welcomed sight.

The anchorage was crowded with boats here to enjoy the festival but, tired from a long day, tonight we're not one of them. The music will just have to wait until tomorrow.

British Columbia Desolation Sound the Inside Passage

Roscoe Bay, West Redonda Island

Thursday, September 15, 2011TheCambrians

British Columbia Desolation Sound the Inside Passage

Roscoe Bay, West Redonda Island

Wednesday, September 14, 2011TheCambrians

Black Lake, Roscoe Bay Marine Park.

I'm beginning to wonder what it is about Roscoe Bay that always seems to bring the rain when we're anchored here. Though there's a certain beauty to be appreciated when it drizzles, after spending the past month enjoying warm, sunny days the change has been too abrupt and is unwelcome. I've been saying that summer's over since the early part of August only to be proven wrong time and time again. But here it is, the fourteenth of September, and there's been a significant difference in the weather over the past couple of days that has a sense of permanence about it. That's not to say we've seen the last of the fine weather, but it will have to share its time with the rain and cold. Although I hope I'm wrong again, the calendar makes me believe that I'm not.

If there's one job that can't be ignored even in the rain, it's shoring the dog. For years I've been taking Sally to the site of the Christensens' former home with absolutely no idea that anybody ever lived there – nature having taken over during the past seventy years. But there are clues, if you pay close attention, in the form of ivy as well as apple and cherry trees. The cherries are long gone, but the apples are in season and there are plenty of ripe blackberries, so I picked them until my fingers were stained purple while Sally mooched around the bluff pretending to be some kind of intrepid grass-eating explorer before returning to the boat for a late-morning tea with the Emmens.

Dousing our chances of exploring yesterday, it cleared up enough this afternoon that David, Bill, Sylvia and I were able to walk down to the lake. We brought along our kayaks and Sylvia and I paddled the length of the lake which ends in a marsh before turning back –a two nautical miles round-trip (a long way in an inflatable kayak) – while David and Bill sat on the bathing rocks and chatted.

But I'm afraid our time in Desolation Sound is over for now. We committed ourselves to attending the Jazz Festival in Pender Harbour this weekend and will have to start making our way south tomorrow. Because neither one of us is looking forward to leaving, we put the trip off until the last minute and now find ourselves sailing to a schedule – something that we HATE doing – and may have to fight some weather along the way making the fifty nautical mile trip even longer. But all isn't lost! Neither one of us is ready to leave the area for the season, so we decided to make the return trip on Tuesday of next week.

British Columbia Desolation Sound the Inside Passage

Prideaux Haven, Desolation Sound Marine Park

Monday, September 12, 2011TheCambrians

Cambria in Roscoe Bay.

There's been a change in the weather overnight and a cooler and stronger breeze is coming from the west which would make kayaking more work than fun so, with only one more afternoon to explore Prideaux Haven, we went for a tiki-tour by dinghy before reluctantly upping anchor and making way for Roscoe Bay with Salubrious following closely behind.

Roscoe Bay, formerly known by the more descriptive name of Salt Lagoon, was home to the Christensen family for 16 years dating back to the late 1920s. The original house, which burnt down in 1928 while the father was away at hospital being treated for a logging injury, was located on Black Lake. They later moved a bunkhouse he purchased from a logger to the lee of a bluff on the north side of Roscoe Bay (circa 1930). Though choosing to live in the wilderness, they weren't alone. A logging operation was set up on the southern shore which was serviced by the Union Steamship on Sundays and Wednesdays and they had neighbours in nearby Prideaux Haven, Galley Bay, Refuge Cove and Pendrell Sound. They also had a radio connecting them to "civilization" which was powered by electricity produced from a water wheel in a flume fed by the creek that ran down from the top of the bluff. For food they grew their own vegetables and tended chickens, pigs, sheep and goats and, like so many other Desolation Sound residents, sold the excess to the store in Refuge Cove. But by 1943 war made it impossible to buy ammunition, something the family couldn't survive without, and they eventually moved down to Texada Island, leaving their home and many possessions behind – none of which are present today.

Only four nautical miles, the trip from Prideaux Haven took less than an hour and, once safely through the narrow, shallow entrance, we dropped our anchor opposite the Christensen homestead. Though we've been here several times, it's the Emmens' first trip and we're eager to share the things we love about the place with them from hiking trails to the freshwater lake ... tomorrow!

British Columbia Desolation Sound the Inside Passage

Prideaux Haven, Desolation Sound Marine Park

Sunday, September 11, 2011TheCambrians

Chatting with Bill and Sylvia in Homfray Channel.

David feels like he's spent more time working on Salubrious than in Prideaux Haven, so the two of us spent the afternoon paddling around in the kayaks discovering more breathtaking views up Homfray Channel. As a bonus, Sylvia lent him her kayak which is longer and more stable in the water making it easier to paddle and more efficient so we were actually able to stay together. But on the downside, now he doesn't want to have anything else to do with his kayak and is ready to toss it overboard.

We started our journey alongside Cobblestone Island which acted as a temporary cemetery for the First Nations who lived in the area. When someone died, the body was washed by a specially designated group of people. They dressed it, placed it in the fetal position and laid it in a bentwood box which they put in a tree on the island. At the end of a year, they'd take the boxed remains down and cremate them during a special ceremony. But all native artefacts have since been removed (or moved) and no evidence of this remains today.

From Cobblestone Island, we paddled out the entrance to Laura Cove and alongside Roffey Island. When men from Vancouver's expedition visited the island in June of 1792, they mistakenly thought the village there had been abandoned because the band had moved to their summer home and, as they poked into piles of "filthy garments and apparel of the late inhabitants," they were attacked by a multitude of fleas which they were unable to get rid of until they had boiled all their clothes. According to native lore, the people hadn't fled. They had been transformed into the fleas which Vancouver's men found there. Again, there's no evidence of Roffey Island's former life today, either the native village or the subsequent homestead which came in the early 1900s, but we did discover a small, private anchorage tucked around a corner that's worth looking at on the chart.

On our way back to the boat, we ran into Bill and Sylvia who were out exploring in their dinghy and floated around Homfray Channel together chatting before going back to Cambria for a late-afternoon nap (David) and knitting session (me). With only one more day to enjoy Prideaux Haven before moving over to Roscoe Bay tomorrow afternoon, we both were a little down and had a quiet evening aboard.

Grace Harbour, Desolation Sound Marine Park

Grace Harbour, Desolation Sound Marine Park

Grace Harbour, Desolation Sound Marine Park

Ballet Bay, Jervis Inlet

The Pender Harbour Jazz Festival

Pender Harbour Jazz Festival

Roscoe Bay, West Redonda Island

Roscoe Bay, West Redonda Island

Prideaux Haven, Desolation Sound Marine Park

Prideaux Haven, Desolation Sound Marine Park

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