Author: Justine

So we’ve had 4 days on the water so far and have reached the town of Masset, 90 nautical miles from Skidegate where we started! This is the last town we’ll pass on Graham Island, from here on there are no roads or settlements and we’re heading towards the exposed West coast. So we made the most of a hot meal cooked by someone else tonight ( no offence to Leon, who has done a great job of keeping our bellies full of fuel every other night!). It was interesting to walk through Old Masset, the Haida village tonight. There are loads of amazing totem poles and we saw dozens of bald eagles and ravens flying incredibly close overhead. The locals were feeding the birds their fish scraps so the birds were swooping down low to fight over them.

The coastline so far has been mainly a low lying beach. We’d been expecting this section to be quite monotonous but were pleased to find that it constantly changed from black pebbles to white sand to huge boulders, with dunes, cliffs or dense forest behind it. Always there are hundreds of huge logs strewn on the top of the beach. Fortunately we haven’t had the sort of weather that put them there as it was pretty calm for the first 3 days, allowing us to make some good distance. yesterday we rounded “Rose Spit’, an amazing 3km long curving sand spit that marks the NE tip of Graham island into what the locals call Long Nose. We basically paddled 6km or more to end up within 100metres of where we started (!) but we couldn’t bring ourselve to portage it!!

We saw our first whale today – a playful Grey Whale who was doing some strange but impressive maneovers with it’s fin on the water. He came within 15 metres of us at one point which was incredile ( and a little scary when you have an expensive camera in your hands!). Just after seeing the whale, and passing ‘Tow Head’, a basalt mound that pokes out of the flat earth from nowhere, the wind picked up and we ended up battling into about 15knots of wind for most of the day… hopefully not the sign of things to come!

Overall we’ve having an amazing time in a beautiful country. Can’t wait for the rest of it!!

Justine called and all is well. They’ve paddled for a couple of days (about 40 nm) and could be in Masset as soon as tomorrow. They are enjoying themselves and happy to be on the water. The weather has been good and they are seeing lots of wildlife although no whales yet. And they are seeing thousands of driftwood logs. Getting Justine’s batteries and cameras to her has been a challenge for myself and John Gamba as the import rules have changed recently in Canada but I’m hoping the gear and Justine will connect up. ——– Mike

Here are some photos during their ferry trip to Prince Rupert, a photo of Haida Gwaii from space courtesy of Dan Moos, and a map showing the towns and ferry route. Mike

So we’ve finally arrived in the capital of Haida Gwaii Queen Charlotte City and the butterflies have come to life big time in my stomach. We are about to have an ‘orientation’ where we are told how to behave responsibly in the National Park and informed about any places we can’t visit due to nesting birds and territorial bears, then we have a few last minute things to sort out before heading off later this afternoon. Queen Charlotte City has a lot of character – the fishing shop has it’s opening hours ‘Monkfishday – 9lbs to 6lbs, and Public Halibuts – clammed’, while the grocery store has hundreds of fishing buoys outside it. It’s been raining most of the time as we’ve travelled up here and we’ve heard the weather this year has been very unsettled and stormy but today it’s fairly calm and it’s not raining yet! It will probably be mid afternoon by the time we get away so we’ll head north up Graham Island for as long as we can muster. Once we allow for all the travelling time, we only have four and a half weeks to paddle around the islands so we don’t want to hang around too long to start with. The first 100km or so of our journey is along a fairly flat beach – 70km up the East coast, then 30km on the north coast to the town of Masset where 1,000 peopel live. In between the tow we round the infamous Rose Spit – a 3km long sand bar where the currents collide, also known as shipwreck point. This is one of the best places for birds in the island and also where the Haida legend says that man was born from the raven. Should be good!! We’ve already seen loads of eagles soaring around town and other people saw whales from the ferry yesterday so I’m looking forward to seeing the wildlife!