Our 2012 Sojourn in Sointula

[Jasper & Karen]

For those of you who haven't ventured into northern British Columbia waters as yet...come soon, while the whales are still visiting!  There is no experience that quite compares with sailing through the spectacular archiplelagos of our inside passage and finding massive marine mammals rising beside your boat for a breath of air!

The downside of the inside passage is that there are two wind directions and they're always against you.  You've got to be prepared for a lot of motoring if you want to explore the Discovery Islands or Desolation Sound, or the Broughton Archipelago where we spent the past 6 weeks.  The upside lies in the innumerable pristine anchorages surrounded by towering green mountains, the wildlife and the coastal communities waiting to welcome you.

Sointula, on Malcolm Island (just off the northeast coast of Vancouver Island) is one such welcoming community.  The first time I went up there by car, I checked in to my guesthouse and decided to walk down to the pub to see who was out and about.  On the way, I phoned Jasper to let him know I'd arrived intact and was talking to him as I stood outside the door of the pub.  Two women passing on bicycles stopped dead at the sight of me and said, "Have you missed the ferry, dear?  Do you need a place to stay?  Don't stand out here in the cold; it's a very nice pub and you can go on in.  There's a nice room just inside the door where you can have your conversation.  Are you sure you've got somewhere to stay, now?  All right then, you get on inside...."  Need I say more about the kind of community it is?  With a permanent population now down to no more than 500, what with the decline of the fisheries that once supported vibrant coastal towns all along the BC coast, every visitor is noticed, welcomed and valued.

Jasper and I arrived in Sointula on board Viajador in mid-August.  My mission was to work with the staff at our head office (Living Oceans Society) for a few weeks so they could get to know their new Executive Director.  Jasper's mission was to spend the next 6 weeks working on the boat.  Yes; it's true.  I kidnapped him to get him to work on the boat.

Work turned out to be quite consuming, so we didn't do as much exploring of the Broughton as I'd hoped when we hatched this plan.  Jasper got caught up in working as a volunteer for Living Oceans, going out with our staff to search for ghost traps and tsunami debris, when he wasn't buffing up our brightwork.  But we did manage to triple our lifetime sightings of whales and sea lions!  We can count days spent watching Orcas hunt coho or rub on the fine gravel beaches of Malcolm Island; Humpbacks fishing and teaching their young; and a very rare sighting of a finwhale in Johnstone Strait as we were leaving this past week.  And this very curious Stellar sea lion came by to check us out while we were checking him out:

[bob mitchell]

I am soooo envious!