What Letter?

This turned out to be an excellent day. A red letter day as Chuck would say. First because we were treated to showers, second because it was a warm sunny day, almost as though it were summer. And finally, because we put a big dent in that lingcod for dinner tonight.

There was probably enough of the cod to feed half a dozen people; more, depending on what you serve it with. Chuck rolled it in flour and cooked it in butter and lemon. It was lightly spiced and he served it with Yukon Golds and steamed carrots. He's cooking the rest of the cod now so we can make fish sandwiches tomorrow for lunch.

The weather for the last couple of days was warmer and sunnier, to say nothing of dryer, than it's been for weeks. What a nice change. And what a long day. It's 8pm at the moment and feels like the middle of the day.

Okay, so where did we find those showers, you're probably wondering. On Hot Spring Island of course! Where else? Around mid-day we anchored off the east side of the island, made contact by radio with the Haida Watchman responsible for keeping an eye on the place, and got permission to go ashore. We paddled the dinghy in, dragged it up above the tide line and started toward the trail to take us to the other side of the island. Suddenly Chuck says Hey! Where's my bag? What bag? The bag with all my stuff in it. Ugh! So we dragged the dinghy back to the water and Chuck rowed back to the boat to grab his bag. It turns out the gentleman whom we saw sitting on the beach watching the whole thing unfold as though we were Keystone Cops was our Haida Guide. We can only hope he wasn't busy. Thankfully this isn't Wall Street. In due time, we were squared away and led to the hot pools of hot water. It was then we were informed that they had just cleaned the pools and they asked us to please take showers before stepping in the water. Oh gee, do we have to? They even provided soap and shampoo. It was worth the stop for the showers, even if there hadn't been hot springs.

There were two pools in operation. The first had a thermometer that claimed the water was 105° but it felt more like a perfect 103°. The second pool has a thermometer claiming 112° but it felt more like 106°. It was pretty hot. I don't think I could get in it if it was really 112°. The numbers are probably meaningless to those who don't own hot tubs to have some frame of reference. The view from the tubs was pretty phenomenal looking out across the water. And we had the pools to ourselves.

If the goal in requiring access permits to visit Haida Gwaii is to keep the islands from being overrun with boaters, they are succeeding admirably. We were told they limit access to 100 persons at a time. That's a lot of area to spread out a hundred people. It feels like the place is empty.

Chuck asked our Guide what it takes to be a watchman. He said first of all you have to be Haida. After that it's just a matter of doing a lot of class work to ensure public safety: chain saw training, survival training, first aid, radio operation, boating, etc. there are five sites throughout the islands that have Watchmen to monitor and assist the public presence. We haven't avoided them, but we haven't gone out of our way to seek them out either. We (or I) were more interested in seeing the islands and doing the cove hopping than rubbing elbows with the public. In retrospect it might have been worth checking one or two of the sites out. But who knows. In any case, we missed three that are not north of us, saw one, the hot springs, and will probably miss the last one because it's out of our range - out on the west coast and south of our intended travel.