Growler Cove - Mile 256

Oct 25, 1975: Five o:clock of this day finds us tied to a disused net float in a very protected corner of Growler Cove. On the shore a few rotting cabins are slowly returning to the forest, and in the shallows, a heron walked slowly through the still water. My girlfriend, Laura, jigged for cod, kitty played on the float, and I rowed slowly around in the skiff. It is as lovely and as quiet an evening as we have had yet on this trip. The night comes very starry, and across the way are the high hills of Vancouver Island, topped even now with fresh snow, gleaming eerily in the starlight, and between us and them, lies Johnstone Strait. Laura says she has never seen so many stars before.

So the evening gives me a perspective on the Strait I’ve never had. Always in the past we have rushed through this windy canyon, before the powerful afternoon westerlies boom through as the air in inland British Columbia heats up, rising and sucking the air down this canyon. But now, on this still night, laid out before us like this, it seems such a different place.

Today and tonight are such a change from the violence of yesterday and last night. How good it felt just to sit and enjoy the starry stillness after dark, with hardly even the call of a bird.

This is the ferrocement tender or fish buying boat that I was operating in 1975. My girlfriend and I were bringing it down from Petersburg, Alaska, to Seattle. The day before we had a very rough trip across Queen Charlotte Sound and a rough night as well with lots of wind and hissing rain and a boat dragging anchor and slamming into us in the middle of the night. So.. we were very glad for a peaceful night at Growler Cove!