Princess Royal Island

From Port Hardy, which is in the very north -NE corner of Vancouver Island, Marcus and I sailed back up to Princess Royal Island in two long but very beautiful days. Tue fog had lifted early in the morning on the 29th so when we started our way up we had a spectacular view of the BC mainland panorama, where we even could make out some of the glaciers that are far away. The day ended with a spectacular sunset accompanied by quite some whales blowing peacefully into upcoming darkness. Clouds had come up and fog started to move in which made the scene so amazingly beautiful. There were little wind/rain sections in the cloud creating super beautiful shapes. Some looked as if someone had taken a brush and just brushed a bent stripe into the yellow-orange-red colored clouds that were following the mountain range in their shape or were just straight where there were no mountains. Some birds flying into the scene topped it all up. We could barely see where we dropped the anchor...Early next morning we left our anchorage, crossed the straight that quickly picked up lots if wind and waves. We had decided that it would probably be better to drive up outside in the open water than against the wind in a channel where the wind would be stronger. And it worked. We even got a couple of hours of amazingly beautiful and calm sailing in. Again the scenery was amazing. We were at the northern end if a low that set foot around Vancouver giving us interesting, soft cloud cover that made for a beautiful fake blue whilst from the direction we were sailing to it cleared up so that we ended the day in sunshine. But I loved the mood before. So peaceful (if you know you're sailing out of it) and quiet. We were sailing through a landscape of many little rocky island, each one of them really pretty, some with trees in them. Then we heard noise and smelled the typical smell. There had to be sea lions. Sure enough we found them. A gazillion sea lions dozing on a pile of rocks. Actually on topf of the biggest one, way over the high tide mark (we were sailing by at low tide). Even though we were far away, about 200m, some got nervous and quickly made their way down into the water. Haha, so funny.
Then yesterday we drove up in beautiful weather from the outside of Swindle Island to Princess Royal Island. We did not move today. This is our try to find white bears. Or bears at all. Only few salmon have been seen. Our problem is this beautiful summer. It has hardly rained here in BC. Everything is really dry, even the evergreen trees turn red and yellow. The bush and trees with leaves loose their leaves all ready due to them being dry. They went from green to brown and off to the floor. One spark would burn down whole BC. That means the rivers and creeks have now water. That means the salmon can't get up there - or can't even find their home creek as there is little fresh water mixing into the ocean water. Maybe sometimes not enough to guide the salmon the way. Here and there we see some jumping outside. Or even here in the river. But they are mostly already changed to spawning and dying state- so they don't taste good anymore- or are so rare out there you can't catch them. In the past three weeks Marcus was only able to catch two. Seems like the season is over. But we keep trying. We had a good tip a week ago, but he had to drive down to Port Hard to deliver crew. So we could not get to that spot and now it's probably too late. But, we'll pass by there anyways in a couple of days.

So far so good. It was great to NOT move Alita for a day. All I did was drive around in the Kajak and in the Dinghy. At night I was able to record some strange calls. No animal I know, so it sounded like little bears whining. I'll have to find out. A super echo amplified their cry. Stupid crows disturbed the silence a lot. When they talk - and they do most of the time- you can't hear anything else. That's called sound pollution.