Friday, July 2, 2010

Shoal Bay - Crab Haven

Fun fact of the day: Shoal Bay, a sleepy half a dozen houses kind of bay today, in the 19th century was the largest town north of San Francisco! It was a big spot for gold mining and people from all over came here to try their luck. Today, boaters come and dock here to enjoy the great crabs and the great view of snowcapped mountains up the inlet across from the bay. We enjoyed a 100m diet for dinner tonight with 4 rock cods, 1 greenling and 4 dugness crabs including one HUGE one that was over 12 inches across, and salad from the garden here. Tasty tasty and cooked over a campfire!

It's been a good paddle up so far. We spent a few days in beautiful Desolation Sound which looks like a someone scattered a bunch of emerald islands onto a jade sea. We stayed at this one place that was right beside a beautiful lake and there was this stream that ran right by our camp. It formed a little tumbling waterfall pool right beside our campsite so we had our own mother nature's jacuzzi. We finally pulled ourselves away after a couple days; we got a bit restless and ready for paddling again! We paddled up the channel between East and West Redonda islands where we saw our first porpoise! Yes, we have dolphins here! And they are so curious. We see them off in the distance and the next thing we know, they are right beside us checking us out.We had a pod today that came up so close we heard their blowholes!

Yucata is the biggest and baddest set of rapids and whirlpools on our trip but was calm as can be as we went through it on slack tide. There was still a bit of current but it was just kind of nice because it was less paddling for us! Yay! We spent the night at Big Bay, camped out at the community marina set between the private resorts of the rich. If you don't know what a private resort is, it's a resort for friends and family only. However, one had a really nice caretaker named Jeremy that gave us a couple huge slabs of salmon when we looked so sad finding out there was no restaurant here and the store only opened between 4 and 5pm!

We passed through Dent Rapids today, also on slack tide. There were some faint outlines of the whirlpools where local fishermen used to boat right up to and pull the fish out of. We tried pulling our fishing-lines but to no luck. The current was working in our direction but the wind was working against us and we were kayaking against the headwind the whole way! It was an arm workout today! We made it to Shoal Bay, about 20 km away from Big Bay and about 6 hours later. Shoal Bay has a sandy bottom, which is the habitat for yummy big Dugness crabs. Mark, another kayaker that we met in Powell River that is heading up to Prince Rupert, has a collapsible crab trap so we had a seafood feast tonight. We brought in fish and he added the yummy crab boiled in seawater.

Anyways, it's dark now and too soon before morning rolls around again. Tomorrow, we hope to hit the Green Pointe Rapids and this German restaurant that is right before it!

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