I’m not sure where we’ll be when I post this, but I know where we are right now: Cutter Cove. I’d like to be more specific, but when I asked Mandy what island this little bay was carved out of, she standing at the helm with easy access to the chart plotter, she looked down, punched a few buttons, and shrugged. “It doesn’t feel like saying.”
In a fit of pique, I went below to consult the definitive reference, our Canadian Hydrographic Survey charts. They didn’t have the name of the island, either. And it’s not like this is a small island… it’s quite large, so large, in fact, that it extends off the edge of the particular chart I was consulting. Perhaps, to save ink, they only print the name on the other end of the island, presumably on some other chart.
I could go dig that one out but I don’t care much. We’re only staying here for a single night, there’s nothing else apparently remarkable about the place other than that it is not Blenkinsop Bay.
Blenkinsop Bay is where we spent last night, tucked into a broad bight off of Johnstone Strait. We often seem to spend nights in Blenkinsop Bay just off Johnstone Strait, usually because we have been over-ambitious and have secretly dreamed grandeous dreams of getting all the way up to the bomb-proof anchorage of Port Neville by day’s end. Port Neville is only two miles up the strait from Blenkinsop, and it is everything that Blenkinsop is not… well-sheltered, shallow, vast, picturesque.
But that dream is as unobtainable for us as Tantalus’ grapes, because every single time we punt our way out of Current Passage, it seems like we hit a wall of wind and those big, choppy waves that Johnstone Strait is famous for. Two more miles might as well be half an ocean, and Blenkinsop Bay is right there, staring at us, unsmiling, with the door held open, a surly inn-keeper who knows they have they only room left in town and you’re going to take it whether the beds are lumpy or not.
And, whether we sail or motor, that’s the inevitable destination, and we look longingly up the channel before swinging in, alone, and setting the anchor in the teeth of winds and waves that, were they not being directly compared to the monsters roaring just outside the entrance, would immediately suggest a re-consideration of life choices.
In the nights that inevitably follow, we are pummeled about, heaved around the cabin and rolled sidelong in our berth, screeched at all the while by demons shaking the rigging overhead.
Every morning after we spend an evening in Blenkinsop Bay, we toddle past the entrance to Port Neville bright and early, ploughing north through placid waters and light breezes, and watch a fleet of smarter, better-prepared boats exiting single-file, looking incredibly well-rested and laid-back. We snarl and keep going.
So Cutter Cove seems pretty idyllic right now, even though a bit of a breeze is kicking up.
It’s easy enough to see why writers constantly seem to describe their entry into the great mountain halls of the world as “entering nature’s cathedral.” Certainly, motoring placidly across the cool green waters of Jervis Inlet as they mirror the great grey and green walls rising vertically into the heavens on either sides reflects the heavenly revery of walking into one the great stone churches of Europe. The wonder and variety of His untrammeled works brings delight and awe at every view (that is, once you get past the desecration of mangy clearcuts at various points along the way).
It’s so natural to make this comparison that I find myself thinking it repeatedly even as I curse myself for falling into cliche during the many hours of motoring up to Princess Louisa Inlet near the head of Jervis.
Princess Louisa is more or less constantly described in terms of its cathedralness: it’s “cathedral-like”(PDF) for Jennifer Hamilton and for scores of other visiting writers; the Douglass’ describe it as “a magnificent granite-walled gorge,” an “azure-blue jewel” decorated with green and gold and copper that together “form a masterpiece of nature.” For Waggoner’s, it’s the “holy grail” for cruisers from around the world. Both texts quote Erle Stanley Gardner’s “Log of a Landlubber” in which he asserts his doubt that any visitor there could possibly remain an athiest… surely, a conversion rate that any of the great European cathedrals would envy.
Despite these superlative recommendations, we had never yet managed to make a visit to that hallowed ground. In terms of northing, Princess Louisa is still relatively close to Seattle. In every other respect, it’s absolutely nowhere near anywhere else you’d probably want to go… the stretch up Jervis Inlet to the entrance is forty miles, miles that you are almost certain to have to motor, miles that you are going to have to cover again on the way out, miles that will not have served to get you one jot closer to any of the other interesting destinations of the Pacific Northwest coast.
On every other trip, we’ve told ourselves that since it was so close to Seattle, and we only had so much time, we’d take a pass in favor of getting further north, and visit it expressly when we had less time at some point in the future.
Only we never did.
This time, we were determined to make the time for it, and everything aligned toward that outcome. The miserable days of rain hunkered down in False Creek only served to charge the falls here, which otherwise begin to diminish in mid-June, with extra volumes of water. The same storms that brought the rain brought constant southeasterlies, which drove us fast and true and without resort to engine all the way from Seattle. And just as we approached Jervis Inlet, the forecast strayed from the unceasing greys of a stalled low and over into several days of high temperatures, light winds, and blue skies under which to spend our visit.
We made up for all that excellent sailing and more during ten long hours motoring up the Inlet, basking in bright, hot sunshine. The dull thrum of the engine crowded out other sensations slowly until it faded into a heartbeat, hours on end.
Finally, we cleared a final point. Ahead, barely visible in the towering walls, a tiny notch: Malibu Rapids. Our calculations for time and distance and current had been exactly correct… we arrived at the mouth of the rapids just as they hit slack, and slithered through the narrow channel without veering in the shifty currents. To port, the summer camp pool, situated on a bold outcropping jutting into the channel, churned with excited campers making the most of the sunny day. Ahead of us, the narrow, green and gray and lacy white finery of Princess Louisa lead inevitably on to the final destination: Chatterbox Falls.
Malibu Rapids in the wake
The Falls are impressive but they are no more impressive than many other waterfalls in the region. It’s the setting that makes them special; on every side, finer, wispier falls grace the towering granite cliffs, playing hide and seek behind massive buttresses and the occasional outcropping of evergreens. Take away the waters of the bay, and you would have something very like the Olympic National Park’s Enchanted Valley.
But you wouldn’t want to take away the waters of the bay, deep and cold though they are. This is a place made for sailors. Already nosed into the fan of mud directly beneath the falls were several powerboats, taking advantage of one of the neatest tricks of Princess Louisa anchoring: using the constant outflow as a sort of reverse stern-tie, keeping the bow into the current and the rode firmly stretched.
There were fewer boats than we had imagined there would be and we took a nice, secluded spot with a stern tie near our own, private sub-waterfall. The chattering fall drowned out the usual boat noises and whatever other noises there might have been from the others in the anchorage… generators may have run all night long, wind turbines could have spun up a frenzy, but we were utterly oblivious.
We explored ashore the next morning, which doesn’t take too much time… the accessible part of the park is small and trails are few. A longer, more difficult path to a cabin higher on the slopes was muddy and slick and plastered with dire warning signs, and we weren’t equipped for anything quite so interesting. More rewarding was simply paddling around the inlet. It seemed wrong to use the outboard in that place, and so we rowed back and forth, out in the center, up close to the falls, tight in around the periphery, peering into the cold depths and up the jumbled slopes.
We lit briefly near our “private” waterfall and attempted to ascend along it, back to where a small pool is rumored to live, but it was like moving through a jungle, and we saw no sign of any pool, just more hillside.
Mid-afternoon, two familiar silhouettes rounded into view down the inlet: Pacific Grace and Pacific Swift, the training ships of Victoria’s SALTS program. Several years ago, we’d crossed paths with them one morning off Ucluelet in fog, and were transported back to an earlier time on that coast, where instead of schoolchildren they might have been crowded with hardy fur traders halfway around the world from home, looking for natives to help make their fortunes in that misty bay.
Even large ships look small in this country
Here, they looked out of scale against the grandeur of the surrounding peaks… more toys then tall ships. They rafted with a shore-tie a hundred meters north of us, quivering with youthful activity and laughter… and shortly, splashes as the more adventurous of the students took the plunge, or were plunged by their compatriots.
It was July 1st, Canada Day, but there were no fireworks, and what celebrations might have happened were dulled by the roar of the waters. The park dock and the anchorage gradually filled up, more cruisers taking advantage of their long weekend and making the trek up into the back-country. A float plane appeared with a party up for the day; it’s a long way to come for a picnic, but there may be no finer place to feast than one of the park tables near the base of the falls. Look up, and tons of water appear to be cascading directly down onto you, crashing into boulders and debris and fanning out into a light mist that makes the forest glisten. Look right, and your companions appear to be the towering evergreens that guard the falls to both sides. Look left, and the still waters of the inlet reflect the granite faces and glittering white traces all back along the valley.
We stayed only two days but it felt like a week.
I don’t know if that qualifies as a religious experience, but it is certainly a brush with the sublime.
I usually experience some grand catharsis when we finally sail off toward the horizon after a period of difficult outfitting. I sometimes worry that the troubles we have getting ourselves together and out the door, as it were, will eclipse the purpose and design of living this sort of lifestyle, shunting us into some undesirable halfway-world between conventional life and sailing free, a limbo that consists of the worst parts of both and the best of neither. That worry, usually strongest in the middle of the darkest hours when it seems as if we will never actually pull away, has always faded with the wind and water and sunshine that wash the soul during long days under sail along the Sunshine Coast.
But this time, that feeling has persisted, clinging tightly and ominously at the back of my head. I’ve begun to worry that the aggravation is never going to be outweighed by the moments of freedom and fleeting happiness, and that dark consideration colors everything that happens now that we’re out cruising freely and without timetables along the Strait of Georgia.
We’ve had good–great, even–sailing since we finally tacked our way out of Port Townsend in light winds two weeks ago. A week of cool, showery weather brought stiff southeasterlies, and we cruised north quickly driven before them. We skipped through the San Juans in two nights, then made the jump straight up to Vancouver in a long, lumpy day in fog and rain.
As we approached the long-awaited entrance to False Creek, though, we noticed what appeared to be an unusual number of kayaks and paddleboards milling about off the old, defunct Kitsilano Coast Guard station. As we drew closer, the skittering crowd suddenly coalesced, and formed a line across the channel. We dropped into neutral and glided slowly to a halt, the waters thankfully placid and dull after a long day fighting Fraser River chop. What we wanted was nothing more than an easy clearance into the country and a solid set in sticky False Creek muck for a long and deserved rest; what we were facing looked more like a blockade. Had the First Nations decided to close off the Creek? Environmental protesters taking matters into their own hands to protest unregulated discharges? We spun theories out of thin air as we tried to divine the purpose of the line-up.
Then, a loud hailer came echoing thinly across the water. “Five… Four… Three… Two… One… GO!” Paddles flashed into motion, water churned, and we found ourselves right in the middle of a racecourse off Kits.
Fortunately, the wave of small craft fluidly broke around us, passing to either side without taking any notice. We picked out a kayaker in the middle of the pack at random: “Go number 183! Come on, you can do it!” She looked up, distracted, then smiled, and bent back to paddling.
We spent the rest of the week in Vancouver wrestling with various post-departure difficulties and adjusting to life without the usual amenities. As is so often the case, our immediate plans were upset by a variety of factors… failure to finish some projects before leaving, international complications, simple things that turned out to be hard or impossible, loose ends that hadn’t been tied up. The intermittent bursts of rain and sun seemed to echo our moods, shifting from dark to light as we wavered between enjoying Vancouver and feeling sucked back in to the problems we hoped we had left behind.
Our moods might have improved had we simply sat there and waited for the weather to turn and the problems to work themselves out, as they always seem to, but the succession of southeasterlies that came with the rains were too good to pass up and we pulled out after only a few days, heading north, with no real destination in mind.
We still have no real destination in mind; but we are running, downwind, from the problems that are probably still lying back where we left them.
