Otter Stampede

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  Campbell River, British Columbia, Canada
Sunday, June 7, 2009

Tuesday we spent a couple of hours in Friday Harbor, then went to one of our favorite anchorages...Prevost Harbor, Stuart Island.  It was beautiful, peaceful and this is where we saw the otter stampede.  It was evening, we were sitting on the top deck enjoying the geese, seagulls and eagles, when all of a sudden there was movement on the beach.  Six otters came scampering over the logs onto the beach and into the water about 150 ft from where we were anchored.  We watched them dive for their dinner. They would surface crunching on what ever it was they had found on the shallow bottom, small crabs mostly.  One otter caught a fairly large red crab which he struggled with until he was able to grab it from the back. The group shared their catch and groomed each other on a nearby floating dock and for about an hour.  

The next morning we went to Bedwell Harbour to check into Canadian Customs, something we have been dreading for the last year after our previous experience in Victoria when they took all our wine.  It was a piece of cake.  Tim went to the customs building, called in, and the nice lady asked a couple of questions and sent us on our way.  What a relief!  We had nightmares about having to go to Sidney and be searched again!  We anchored in Sibell Bay, near Ladysmith.  Another nice anchorage but it was a hot day.  We are not used to hot.  We had all the doors and windows open and our umbrella up on the top deck.  We weren't the only ones hot, there were locals in their small boats swimming and water skiing to cool off.

Thursday we got up early, 5:30, to get to Dodd Narrows for the slack tide.  We bought the canadian tide book, but didn't realize it was not adjusted for daylight savings time (we just found that out yesterday) so we went through before slack tide.  It wasn't really a problem except for the little sail boat in front of us.  We had to keep slowing down so we didn't run over him.  And then there was the log boom on the other side...3 tugs racing around gathering logs...don't know why they were doing this right on north side of Dodd Narrows.

We spent all day Friday and most of the day Saturday on the Strait of Georgia.  It was windy and "rolly" both days.  Spent Friday night in Deep Bay and last night in Campbell River.  We will stay here tonight and leave about 5AM to hit slack tide at Seymour Narrows.  

This is the first time we have had internet since we left Friday Harbor.  Doubt we will have it again until we hit Alaska.  

 

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