FROM THE HELM
“Probably never see that again…”
During one of the few sunny days in December, we went out for a little jaunt in the inflatable, and as we were idling alongside Newcastle Island, some movement caught our eye. . . it was a full-grown mink sitting on shore, under an overhanging rock, devouring the remains of a fish almost as big as itself.Michael cut the engine and got out the oars (he knows me now, and if there’s a photo op, I want it) to get us in a little closer without disturbing the event. The mink looked up from its dinner once or twice and stared me down while I snapped pictures.
As we were idling away from the shore, Michael said, ‘We’ll probably never see anything like THAT again.”
I realized, when he said it, that those words really summed up our boating adventures over the years, and all the ‘firsts’ we could only have experienced out on the water…
There was the time a pod of orcas came in among several of us while we were jigging for salmon off Qualicum Beach. As we were heading back to the marina (after the photo op, of course) the biggest one we’d seen surfaced RIGHT off our bow, not twenty feet in front of us. Ever made eye-contact with an orca?
Another time, a bald eagle swooped down from the sky less than fifty feet away on our starboard side to nail a small fish swimming too close to the surface. In that instance, I didn’t have time to get the camera ready — but I can assure you that bald eagles really do have a wingspan of over six feet. The following summer, we watched a bald eagle swimming (yes, you read that right) in Sansum Narrows, with his catch in his claws. And you can read about another bald eagle ‘first’ experience at http://www.marinamirror.com/boothbay.htm .
Then there was the evening on our way from Tribune Bay to Deep Bay, when we were ‘swarmed’ by a pod of Pacific White-Sided Dolphins. You can read ‘the rest of the story’ here … http://www.marinamirror.com/dolphins.htm.
Not all of our firsts have been photo ops, but I wouldn’t have missed them, just the same. Spending two hours in a 50-knot gale in the Juan de Fuca Strait, for example, didn’t exactly inspire me to dig out the camera. Hanging on for dear life in a ‘Qualicum’ blow five miles south of Denman Island didn’t leave a hand free for picture-taking, either — nor was I in the mood the day we almost ‘bought it’ in Dodds Narrows, when we realized, once we were in, that we’d miscalculated slack time by an hour ‘or so’.
Our log book is full of these ‘never-see-anything-like-that-again’ experiences, and now that we’ve rounded the corner to the next boating season, I can hardly wait to find out what ‘first’ adventures 2003 has in store for us.