Blog Reader, Blog Reader, Blog Reader, Tammy here at the Blog. Weather forecast for today is cloudy and light winds for our 44 mile voyage. The promise for this evening is that we will be anchored in front of a beautiful little waterfall and perhaps we see bear.
Late start this morning. We unhooked from Sam, as we rafted last night, and we headed out of Bishops Bay where we spent a lovely evening celebrating Andrew’s 44th Birthday. We have checked all the engine, oil and filters and all the instruments are reading normal and we are off to the promise of a spectacular anchorage in Lowe inlet. Andrew points out that this was a spectacular way to start out his 45th year so as a wife I think I win the award this year since he just can’t stop smiling and seems very pleases that he celebrated his special day on the Domino and with a group of wonderful new friends.
Ursela Channel was a little choppy as waves were at our beam so we had an hour or so of rolling action. We entered Verney Passage and Sam was right the views were spectacular. About a half hour into Verney Passage we saw a Heli-logging operation! I have never seen this done before so we slowed down to 2 knots so that we could watch for a few minutes. Pictures and descriptions below;
Picture 1: Yacht Shot wins the race with the Chinook Helicopter! (Not really, they are just really fast!)
Picture 2: These Chinooks are twin rotor, heavy lift capable helicopters developed for the military for troop and equipment transport. These Chinooks are assisting in harvesting lumber and man are the fast. They hover, get fastened to the tree and then lift the tree and carry it over the water and drop it near a little tug boat. The tug then grapples the tree and connects it into a log raft and the raft is pulled away to a lumber mill somewhere nearby and made into the wood that you and I buy at Home Depot! I don’t like that they are cutting down trees but after seeing this effort I think it must be a better method than clear cutting because I don’t think they are building logging roads to get to these trees. The lumber jacks are living on the barge in the trailers and they are either lifted into the forest by the Helicopter and lowered into the woods or they are boated to the shore and they walk up. I think in this case they were lowered down into the woods. I know the Chinooks are using a lot of fossil fuel but the forest is not being clear cut. I am torn!
Picture 3: The floating hotel barge for the lumber jacks, barge crew and the Helicopter pilots. The barge looks like it is on shore from this angle but it is anchored out and those things on top the barge are trailers which is where the staff eat, sleep and recreate. Notice that one of the Chinooks is on break and has landed on the barge to give you a sense of size. I suspect that once they have cut down the allotted amount for that area they move on and the barge moves the whole operation somewhere else.
Picture 4, 5: Photo of the Chinook carrying the log to the barges
Picture 6: Close up of the Chinook releasing the log (would love to see the fasteners and chain that carry these logs in the air because these barges are trusting their lives to those chains). Notice the splash in the water is as tall as the little tugs. We passed a lot of these little tugs pulling logs into places like Ketchikan and out on Prince Rupert.
We arrived a Lowe Inlet at 5:00 and Sam was indeed correct, the views are spectacular. We were able to get the anchor to grab almost right in front of the falls and those photos will be in the 2nd post today. There is a lake at the top of Verney Falls and very soon there will be bear everywhere eating the Salmon that try and swim upstream.
Ran, Jan, Andrew and I took Dinghy’s over to a little island and hiked up to the fish and game cabin which was cool. Those photos are included in a later post today.
This is Tammy standing by on channel 68 until I get all the photos posted from today! Yikes, I am getting behind.
- Left Dock/Weighed anchor: Unrafted at 9:20 AM
- Cruise Log: 44 Nautical Miles
- Weather Conditions: Sunny in late afternoon and cool.
- Navigational Obstacles: Avoiding the logging tugs,ferries and cruise ships in Grenville Channel
- Wildlife Sighting: Shrimp , Birds, Eagles and Humpbacks
- Arrived Dock/Dropped anchor: Anchored at @ 5:00 PM
- Slip for the night: $0
- Time today Helm for TEA: 2 hrs
- Time today Helm for ACA: 5.5 hrs
- Lessons learned: Getting there last sometimes awards us the best anchorage!
