A chance encounter with Chuck Curry in 2007 set our minds in motion and
inspired this trip that we embarked on July 17. We were camped at
the west end of Higgins Passage on July 18, 2007 when Chuck stopped by to
chat. A Puget Sound paddler, he was going solo from Port Hardy to
Prince Rupert. He had crossed Milbanke Sound earlier that day in the
same dense fog that Greg had unerringly led the 15.2 NM route from Milne Island
to Higgins. After about 20 minutes Chuck paddled off towards the
west. He still had some miles to make. We would meet up
with him later in Seattle and learn that he had taken a route outside of Aristazabal,
Trutch and Banks Islands. He had intended to go outside of Porcher,
also, but ducked inside because he was running out of food. We were
inspired to attempt his route, in reverse, and that is what we spent the
previous two years planning.
An extremely rough sketch of our intended route was to go through
Edye Passage at the north end of Porcher Island and hang a left, keeping open
ocean to our right until the time came to cross Queen Charlotte Strait for Port
Hardy. We didn’t have the expectation that conditions would allow
that but it was still the dream. The BC Coast isn’t known for
producing the perfect stretch of weather it would take to allow us to consider
that a viable route so an Inside/Outside Route is what we ended up doing and we
made choices each day as to what route to take. We had a two week
hard-date where we had to get Greg to Klemtu or Shearwater for his ferry ride
back to Port Hardy so we couldn’t afford to get pinned down by inclement
weather.
West Coast British Columbia
Map from Encarta World Atlas
For the benefit of family and friends Dave carried a Spot
Satellite Messenger on his back and we “sent off a Spot” each morning when we
launched, at lunch if we put ashore and again when we reached a campsite. When
we had no option to get out of our boats for lunch we activated it on Dave’s
back or not at all. These devices seem to have had some reliability
issues, however, Dave’s worked perfectly and posted each Spot that we sent. For
safety’s sake I wore an ACR Terrafix EBIRB that we would rely upon if we
required extraction.
Seattle to Prince Rupert
At 2:15 AM on the morning of July 16 Dave
arrived at my house. We loaded the truck and started north. Two
hours to Tsawwassen, 30 minutes on the dock, a two hour crossing to Nanaimo and
five more driving up the island would bring us to Port Hardy. On the
way up-island we made a stop at Campbell River to pick up Dave’s fishing
license and to mail the food supply for the second half of our trip (55 pounds)
to Klemtu where we would pick it up two weeks hence.
Waterfront Park
