Justine’s Blog

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!

All day today our ferry snaked up through the Inside Passage through a narrow channel, surrounded by steep rocky bluffs covered with fir trees. The scenery was beautiful although it was mostly mist covered and moody. After 15 hours we arrived at Prince Rupert, arranged to leave our kayaks at the ferry terminal and found a place to stay. After a beer in the pub next door, we’re ready for bed. Fortunately our ferry to Haida Gwaii tomorro isn’t until 1pm so we get a bit of a lie in at last!!

IMPORTANT PREPARATIONS FOR THE TRIP

This blog comes from the Thunderbird Inn in Port Hardy where Shawna, Leon, Matt & I are sparing no expense and sharing a room! Matt has driven us up here and will drop us off at the ferry bright and early tomorrow. We have been told we need to be there by 5.30 for our 7.30am ferry to Prince Rupert. Yikes, very little sleep again tonight as it’s 11.30pm already! We won’t exactly get to make the most of what might be our last bed for several weeks. The drive up through Vancouver island was more built up than I had imagined but we did see 3 black bears close to Port Hardy which was pretty cool.

THE THUNDERBIRD INN!

MEDITATION ON THE FERRY TO VANCOUVER ISLAND

So we’re nearly ready to go! We leave the San Juan islands tomorrow morning on the 7am red eye ferry! Tonight Body Boat Blade hosted a farewell BBQ which was fun & I gave a talk about some of my adventures. Shawna has designed some great t-shirts about the trip which her and Leon are sporting here. We’re selling the t-shirts to help pay for some of our food on the trips & also to raise money for the Sea Doc society who work to preserve the marine environment. If anyone wants to buy one then please contact Body Boat Blade – there are only a limited number ( 60 ). Email info@bodyboatblade.com

It will take us 3 days to get to Haida Gwaii. Tomorrow we drive up to Port Hardy at the northern end of Vancouver Island. On Tuesday we get the ferry from there to Prince Rupert in mainland Canada, then on Wednesday we take a ferry from Prince Rupert to Skidgate in Haida Gwaii. On Thursday we need to take an orientation to make sure we know how behave in the national park of Gwaii Haanas, then we’ll finally start paddling on either Thursday or Friday!

We have hired a satellite phone ( generously paid for by Kokatat – thank you very much!) so we hope to do daily website updates on this blog. We’ll phone Mike DuPas from Orcas island and he’ll kindly write up our daily report for us. He’ll show a google map of our position and hopefully the odd photo of the locations, as we probably won’t be able to email photos back for a while.

So here are a few brief details of the plan! We intend to circumnavigate the 2 main islands in a figure of eight, starting with Graham island in the north. We’ll head up the more sheltered east coast and then round the exposed west coast in a counter clockwise direction. We’ll cross back through the strait between Graham and Moresby island, stop in Queen Charlotte City to resupply with food and charge camera batteries before heading around Moresby island in a clockwise direction. Gwaii Haanas Park on Moresby will be the highlight of the trip so we’ve saving the best for last! Paddling on the more sheltered east coasts first will be a good warm up! So, I’m excited for the trip. It’s nearly midnight as I write this and a small group of us are still up chatting. The wake up call is at 5am – I wonder how much more of this whisky we’re going to get through!!?