Dent Island Lodge

Fishing and Relaxing at Dent Island Lodge

Well, Bob wanted to go salmon fishing, and Dent Island Lodge is the place to do it. So we had Henry (the manager) arrange for us to go out with Scott Anderson from 7-11am and find those fishies.

We awoke to thick, dense fog. It was really hard to see in front of your face, but we did find Scott and his 17’ fishing boat. We took off through those canoe rapids (it was high tide and not roaring too much) and didn’t get too far in the fog before we were navigating by GPS, trust, and prayer.

Foggy start.

After a couple of hours, the fog starts to lift and we can see the other boats fishing near us.

About 10:30 and the fog rolls back. A beautiful day with lots of fellow salmon hunters.

Salmon fishing is done in these boats by trolling. You set the line down about 130 feet and wait for something to nibble. Then you grab the fishing pole, hike it up high while you’re reeling like mad to ‘set the hook’ and then you keep reeling and reeling till you find out if you got a fish or a shoe or what.

Karen fights another Coho.

We had two poles going at all times. The one nearest Bob used large anchovies for bait and the one nearest me used a “hootchie”. Funny word for a green squidy looking thing. Anyway, Scott was a terrific guide and we had lots of action in no time at all. There are 5 kinds of Pacific Salmon: Chinook (a.k.a. King or Spring Salmon); Sockeye; Pink; Coho and Chum. We were on the hunt for Chinook, as you could keep those if they were large enough.

Karen with a "Pink". We'll get to eat this one.

The Coho, if wild (you could tell by one of their fins) had to be released, but if you caught a hatchery Coho (had that one fin cut off when small so it would be easy to tell), you could keep them. Sockeye weren’t really running, and most folk talk about pinks with a distinct lack of respect. Chum would be ok, but I didn’t have a lot of heart for catching a fish that shares a name with fish guts.

Releasing one of the many wild Cohos.

So…Bob’s new name is Chinook Bob. He hooked two nice Chinooks, one 12 pounds and one nearly 18.

This one did not get away.

Now the goal is to hook a Tyee, which is a Chinook that weighs 30 pounds or more, but we left that one there just in case someone else needed it (ha ha). Between us, we also caught one pink and 8 wild Coho(that had to be released). It was a blast reeling those fish in. The Coho put on a show and flop and jump as they near the boat. Despite the fact that they must realize we have to let them go, they have fear in their eyes as you reel them near enough to the boat to cut the hook and set them free.

 

Bob and fishing guide "Scotty" pose with a 12lb Chinook.

I was sad when it was time to come back in, I wanted more fish. But, after the 2 Chinook were filleted and vacuum packed, we had 12 huge servings of fresh salmon and who could want more? We gave the pink to Scott, by the way.

A great morning of fishing.

By the time the salmon was back in our fridge and freezer, we realized that we were knee deep in salmon and that 2 people weren’t going to be able to do them justice. Our first attempt at sharing was with two nice folks aboard the sailing vessel Coyote Blue. We had met them the day before and had been their accomplices at dinner as they fed the cats tasty tidbits from dinner. They received the salmon with joy, but gave us a bottle of wine in return. Hmmm…this trading stuff works well.

My second attempt at trading or even giving away fresh yummy salmon taught me a lesson in British Columbian reality. I was walking the docks and admiring a boat that was a 65’ Pacific Mariner. Bob and I had seen a similar boat last year at Princess Louisa, and thought they were really nice. So I walked down the dock to where the owner was washing his boat and asked if it was indeed a Pacific Mariner. In return, I was invited aboard for a grand snoop. This boat was pristine. Remember, you’re traveling in salt water (think water spots) and the fresh water you can access is too precious to clean a boat. Anyway, this boat had white carpet throughout. It was spotless. Immaculate. And the owner told me they had 4 dogs aboard! Yikes. My house is nowhere near this clean. I was impressed…and impressed by the boat and layout as well. It was lovely. I even got a tour of the standing room engine room. I think I surprised the owner by asking him if he had an engine room where he could actually stand up. As a thank you for the tour, I asked him (proudly) if he’d like some fresh salmon. He smiled weakly and then explained that he had a freezer full left to eat from his summer in Alaska. I started to realize that offering many folks fresh salmon is like offering sand to someone who lives on the beach. Still, it was worth it, because when I returned to Best of Times, Bob was jealous that I got the tour.

And then…our friends Ann and Doug showed up in Mokoro, the same folks we met at Blind Channel a few nights before.

Mokoro at Dent Island dock.

We had dinner together…but first….when last we left the kayak, it was in the back bay, having been portaged over there from our boat by the chef and the dock guy. Well, it was time to think about getting it back to the mother ship. The problem is, no one was going to portage it back for us. So we had to wait for slack water in those darned canoe rapids and then bring it back ourselves. I had lobbied to do that early the next morning, but Bob wanted to get it home and not worry about it. So, with less than one hour till dinner, we ran over, got the kayak, went through the nearly slack rapids with no problem, got an ovation from those watching on the deck, and made it to dinner with Ann and Doug on time. We had another great meal, made even better by the company. They are special folk, no doubt about it. Tried to convince them to come over for some more wine, but they had a date with the salmon in the early morning and decided turning in early was the better part of valor.

Blind Channel Resort to Dent Island Lodge

Blind Channel Resort to Dent Island Lodge: 15.8NM

Happy Labor Day! No labor for us!! We awoke to a cold and foggy morning and were glad of the heat on our boat. Have I mentioned that the water around here is about 50 degrees? You don’t want to go swimming, that’s for sure.

 This is how "stuff" gets delivered here. In this case, a barge full of propane tanks of all sizes. 

We headed out for Dent Island Lodge, a small resort owned by the Nordstrom family that our friends Ann and Doug recommended highly to us.

Dent Island Lodge  

Karen at the Dent Island welcome sign.  

I had already planned to come, but it was great hearing about it from someone who had been there. We timed our trip to go through Dent Rapids at slack and arrived to a fairly empty dock at Dent Island. It is a lovely spot, set on the mainland but right next to “canoe rapids” that run about 12 knots at maximum flood or ebb and make a lovely waterfall noise.

Canoe Rapids in full flow.  

Canoe Rapids turns slack.  

If you want to visit Dent Island, it's going to be by boat or plane. Here the "rush hour" arrivals come right after we have docked.  

The lodge has a huge main building with a library, a TV, a bar, dining room and outside decks as well as a cascade of other decks down to the canoe rapids where you can sit and read a book and watch the rapids. Radiating out from the main lodge is a system of wooden walkways and bridges that lead to 4 “cabins” nestled into the pines. Each cabin has a deck with a view of the water, and while I didn’t get into one, I’m sure they are lovely.

There is a workout room that has floor to ceiling windows looking at the water…but who wants to work out? Must be for those corporate types who come here for retreats.

Exercise room exterior. All the buildings have a beautiful rustic architechture.

Dent Island exercise room.  

View from the exercise room.  

Same view from the exercise room but at high tide.

There is a large group of Japanese fishing enthusiasts who are here and are repeat guests. They fish from dawn to dusk and brought their own chef from Japan to cook for them. They are really nice and seem to be having fun.

We cooked up the “pink” salmon for lunch on the grill (yummy, and so fresh) and then Bob got antsy and wanted something to do. The kayaking is on the other side of the bay, so the 110 lb kayak needed to be portaged to the back bay. It quickly became clear that I wasn’t up to the task, so Bob drafted the dock guy and the CHEF of this resort to do the dirty work. I shudder to think how they carried that thing 200 yards, up and down paths and across those wooden bridges.

The docks at Dent Island.

Time to kayak! We had a great time, though I was nervous that the rapids (both Canoe and Dent were howling) might reach out and suck us into their turmoil. Of course, they were a zillion yards away but you could see some white water and hear them, but where we were was like a millpond, and that was fine with us.

Dent Island from Back Bay in the kayak.  

Large Dent cabin as seen from the kayak.

 The kayak we left in the back bay but we’ll have to figure out how to get it back to our boat, hopefully when the canoe rapids are at slack. We decided to stay an extra day because Ann and Doug were coming on the 6th and because Bob wanted to go salmon fishing.

The next-door neighbor at Dent Island. You need a boat or a seaplane to go borrow a cup of sugar.

 Our dinner at the lodge was fabulous, very high quality stuff in a relaxed surrounding. The best part was that the lodge has 2 cats who hang out in the dining room. This is totally cool with me, as our cats do that too. Bob and I fed them both little tidbits of goat cheese soufflé and they were quite happy. One, “Miss Kitty”, let me hold her and I put here in Bob’s lap. I needed a kitty fix and got it!  We also watched 2 seals “body surf” through the canoe rapids, which was really neat to see.

Karen "poses" with Miss Kitty.

If there is a cat, Karen will find it. In this case, Twitch.

Handfield Bay to Blind Channel Resort

Handfield Bay to Blind Channel Resort: 14.5NM

A leisurely morning finds us leaving around 11 for our next stop, Blind Channel Resort.

Welcome to Blind Channel Resort.

The weather was nice, the seas were calm, and our 6 nautical miles of Johnstone Strait (notorious for nasty seas when winds blow against current) were peaceful. The entrance to Blind Channel (also known as Mayne Passage) is hard to spot from Johnstone Strait, hence the name. Made sense to me. We got to the “resort” and were the only boat there, soon to be joined by a host of others, though it wasn’t crowded in the least.

It’s a lovely spot owned for 30+ years by the Richter family. They have a store so you can re-provision (hard to find stores up here), fuel (very important and also often hard to find), potable water to refill our tanks (a precious commodity, also very hard to find), washer and dryers, and….a great restaurant, the Cedar Post Inn. We were there on the second to last night of the season for them; they close the restaurant just after Labor Day. Their “high season” lasts about 6 weeks. It is hard to imagine making enough money in six weeks to keep you going all year. The Richters also have a lovely home, and as we were walking toward it, we saw an amazing display in the middle of the channel. A group of about 50 porpoises were frolicking in the middle of the channel, not just swimming but actually breaching like whales and flying high out of the water and then back into it with a resounding splash. We watched them for 15-20 minutes before they decided to move on.

 The Richters convinced Interfor (the tree guys) to maintain some nice walking paths at the resort.

Karen on footbridge to Lookout Point.

We took the easy one out to a nice lookout spot, accompanied by the Resort dog. I was happy for the company, as there are bears in dem dere woods, and I figured the dog would be a good alert system. Despite several forays off the path, the dog did not spot a bear and that was fine with us.

Karen at Lookout Point

Blind Channel Resort from Lookout Point.

We chatted up a lot of nice people at Blind Channel. One small boat of fishermen went out to catch some salmon and said they would give us a “pink” (one of the 5 types) if they caught any. They came back flush with fish and walked down to our boat to see if we wanted a fish. We traded them 3 beers for it and all came away happy with the exchange.

At dinner in this lovely inn that overlooks Mayne Passage, we met a wonderful couple, Ann and Doug, who own a 52’ Ocean Alexander. They had been out since May and were working their way back from Alaska to Seattle. I asked if they would adopt me, but that didn’t seem to strike a chord. Still, we had glorious conversation over dinner and were invited to their boat for a post dinner glass of wine. Their boat, Mokoro, is absolutely lovely and best of all, they had a cat! I was nearly rendered speechless when I found out their cat, Koko, was just diagnosed at age 10 with Chronic Renal Failure, the same disease Aspen has. I spoke at length with Ann about how to give the fluids and our challenges with Aspen. I think she enjoyed talking with someone who was going through the same thing.

Best of Times at Blind Channel Resort.

Octopus Islands to Handfield Bay

  Octopus Islands to Handfield Bay: 16.7NM

I awoke early for some reason and went up to the pilothouse to watch the sun rise at 6:30. Unfortunately, it was very cloudy and foggy, so no sun was observed. The other ships in view were like ghost ships, barely visible through the fog.

Foggy start to the morning. Just a different kind of beauty.

"Not going out there."

Clouds starting to lift as the morning gives way to another day.

A couple of pretty pictures of the morning serenity.

A couple of our neighbors from the other cove get an early start.

Today we headed for Handfield Bay, just off Cameleon Harbour in Thurston Marine Park. (The Canadians have this marine park thing locked and loaded—they do a great job of keeping the most gorgeous land in government hands so it can be enjoyed by all). To get there, we had to transit Upper Rapids on Okisollo Channel at slack tide. This area has lots of rapids form where there are narrow passes, and they have strong currents and lots of white water. Best to transit at slack. When we went through it was super slack, nothing exciting to see. Turned into Discovery Channel and saw more traffic than we had in days, though not more than 5-6 boats. Turned again into Nodales Channel and started to look for Cameleon Harbour. Nodales Channel was so pretty….this entire area is tree lined to the waterline and full of mountains.

Handfield Bay’s entrance required some careful navigation, there is a very narrow channel edged by rocks and shoals, so Captain Bob kept the boat right in the center. I admit to being a little distracted as there were two porpoises just off our starboard side and I wanted to watch them instead of where we were headed! There was a sailboat anchored in the middle of this small bay, and two powerboats rafted on the right side and stern tied to shore. That left us a little maneuvering room on the port side of the bay, and we had a blast. We found a good spot to drop the anchor, just far enough away from the sailboat and then backed in close to shore and took a stern line ashore. That means launching the dinghy and having Bob “beach” it sort of on the rocks while I play mountain goat and climb and climb till I find a good tree or rock to attach the stern line too. No problem.

We settled in to have lunch and watched as the 2 powerboats that were rafted decided to leave. Interestingly, both had anchors down. And you know what happened! The anchors became intertwined and it was a good source of entertainment to watch the two skippers hoist their anchors and untangle them. They were really cool about it and noted that they were the afternoon’s entertainment.

"I got it". "No, I got it!"

 

Closeup of the anchor spaghetti. Pink arrow points to the two entangled anchors.

We decided to rest on kayaking, so took the dinghy down to the head of Cameleon Harbour, checking out the 2 powerboats and 2 sailboats that were anchored there. A lovely spot, but not as cute and secluded as ours! As we passed by the anchored 40’ Nordhavn, we said hello and they told us they wanted to come into Handfield Bay where we were but it looked too crowded!

I wanted to see the rest of the marine park so Bob got the seriously overpowered dinghy flying and, with our trusty portable GPS on the seat beside him, took off for parts unknown. It was a great day, we saw several blue herons and also found a great anchorage lagoon where the entrance dries at high tide but is safe inside. One sailboat had snagged that great anchorage all to itself.

When you’re “on the hook”, you have to make all your meals…or I should say Bob does dinner and we share breakfast and I do lunch. Dinner was superb, chicken on the grill marinated in peanut butter and other stuff and red bliss potatoes roasted in the oven with fresh herbs. No hardship at Café Bob.

Capt'n Bob at the helm of the versatile explorer dinghy.

Best of Times sitting pretty in Handfield Bay along with the kayak named "Canoe".

Karen and Best of Times from the dinghy.  

The Octopus Islands

At anchor in the Octopus Islands 

Last year, I had dreamed of reaching the Octopus Islands, because their reputation was superb and I wanted to see if reality lived up to the hype. It does….in spades. We had a peaceful night at anchor, and awoke to watch the tide recede. This was particularly interesting, because while we knew that these islands were dotted with rocks, when the tide went out, you could see them in living color. A bit scary, as we had navigated so carefully yesterday and had the charts with the enlargement of the area in our hands and on our computers, but not every hazard is marked and it pays to keep a close eye on the water from the bow, looking for white smears that turn into big rocks at low tide. 

 

The day before when we anchored in the afternoon at high tide, this was the view just to our north. Maybe a good place to anchor? 

 

The next morning; low tide, and the same view reveals the rocks and shoaling that were covered at high tide. Definitely not a good place to anchor! 

   

Best of Times in The Octopus from the kayak. 

 While the tide was low, we went for a 90-minute kayak excursion, our second experience in the kayak and just a great as the first. In fact, it was better, as exploring at low tide means that you see all the cool life forms that are typically covered up. We saw huge orange and purple starfish, crabs, and clams, who at low tide were squirting water into the air like geysers. Bob and I do not have the hang of synchronous paddling yet, but we are trying to improve. We did see a few huge seals frolicking across Waiatt Bay, but they were shy and did not let us approach. 

    

Karen in the Kayak. 

 After lunch and a siesta, we decided to go for a dinghy ride to see the entire area and scope it out. Unfortunately, our tour was cut short by rain. I was amazed that on a Friday of a long holiday weekend, there were so few boats in this lovely province-maintained marine park. We retreated to our dry boat in our snug anchorage, now shared with just one other boat, a sailboat apparently single-handed by an avid female kayaker. Wonder if she gets lonely? 

 

Karen shows off her bruises as she hangs the towels out to dry, taking advantage of the sun starting to chase away the rain. 

   

The view from our cove over to the neighboring cove. Another stern line holds us fast in this small anchorage. 

   

Where's Karen? Just look for the book, blankie and sunbeam. Do Not Disturb! 

One other thing – up here, getting rid of garbage is a chore. Few places accept it, and there’s always a charge. There was a garbage barge moored at the entrance to the marine park, complete with flower boxes and a money box on a chair for you to use the honor system when you dropped off your refuse. How cool is that? 

 

The garbage barge outside Octopus entrance.