Late Monday morning (July 21st) had us motoring in no wind and calm seas south and then east 12 nautical miles to Collision Bay. With s/v Senja heading to the nearby Ikeda Cove, we thought we’d probably see them again in Rose Harbour later in the week if not sooner. Inside Collision Bay we anchored tucked up in the north end of the inner bay behind the unnamed tree-covered islet that is connected to the rest of the island during low tide (52° 17.0074′ N, 131° 09.0173′ W).
Collision Bay gave us another chance to just sit in one place for several days, and we spent our time mostly cooking, baking, and reading, with a brief trip to land one day. You might wonder why I don’t talk about going to land more, but it’s simply because here we usually don’t. We can pick across rocky beaches and poke our heads into the dense forests in some places, but with the steep hills and thick greenery it would be difficult to go far; it’s difficult enough getting a hundred feet into the forest from the beach.
We continue to have fun with bread and focaccia. Tuesday evening aside from our dinner of InstantPot chicken biryani and some daal I baked a focaccia in the cast iron skillet, with my partner adding in a honey-miso-garlic mix to the dough as I formed it, which we also spread on top before baking along with sesame oil and chili crisp oil as well as chives and black sesame seeds. It’s an amazing combination of flavors, and we’ll need to experiment more with using the chili crisp oil on focaccia!
Thursday late morning had us pulling anchor and heading to Rose Harbour, a route of about 16 nautical miles, much of which we spent slowly, and unsuccessfully, trolling for salmon, so we didn’t end up anchoring out front of Rose Harbour (52° 09.0106′ N, 131° 05.2801′ W) until just after 5pm. Dinner? Cast iron pizza, made from dough that had been sitting in the fridge for two days. Good food in remote places makes the experience even better.
There isn’t much to Rose Harbour aside from a few houses. The only activity we saw (and heard on VHF channel 6) was coordination between a tour group and one of the houses that hosts dinners and apparently lodgers overnight as well, as this tour group arrived in the early evening and stayed overnight.
From here we needed to wait a few days for the next nice sunny day to go visit SGang Gwaay, and being an overcast Friday, we pulled anchor after a lazy breakfast (banana pancakes) to head a few miles east to Heater Harbour. Once outside the channel an into deeper water we dropped the salmon trolling rigs in the water and slowly motored along at 2 knots, and it wasn’t long until we spotted whale exhalations in the distance. We weren’t exactly sure what they were at first until two of them started getting close to us from opposite sides, so we turned the engine off and pulled our fishing lures in. Oddly enough, the one my partner was about to reel in started tugging hard for a moment and then was a bit heavy to reel in. We assumed a plant, but no, it was a quillback rockfish! After securing the rockfish we continued to look around and watch for the whales.
At one point two surfaced less than 100 meters from us, on opposite sides of the boat, and we could clearly hear the loud exhalations! This is well within the legal limit for distance from whales, but we couldn’t do anything about it given they were on both sides of us and the next time they surfaced they were both well away from us. Once we were sure they were well away, we restarted the engine and continued to Heater Harbour, where we dropped anchor in about 45 feet of water (52° 07.6016′ N, 131° 02.8880′ W).
