It’s been a long, hard week of hauling. First, we hauled all our furniture and belongings out of the hold of the Moody Blue and up to our sheds. Then, we took the Moody Blue and the Kipper’s Folly to Kelsey Bay to pick up the first half of our cabin materials.
One of the disadvantages of building in a remote, off-grid site is that pretty much everything gets done by hand or with small power tools. There are no trucks, cranes, or fork-lifts. And so it has been with the start of our cabin. On Monday, at 4:30 pm, a truck and flat-bed trailer arrived with the first load for our cabin. Quickly, we did the easy part – off-loading the truck onto a patch of grass near the loading dock at Kelsey Bay. This created heaps of materials. How were we going to get all of this into a boat and a herring skiff? The next stage wasn’t quite so quick. A day and a half later, along with aching muscles and a very unusual assortment of bruises, we had everything packed in. Amazing!
Wednesday night we made a slow crossing of Johnstone Strait, just ahead of a southeast storm. Thursday night we beached the Kipper. Friday we started hauling again – this time up the slope to our cabin site. A couple of kind neighbours showed up and helped us with our “glue-lams”, the pair of very long (24 feet) and very heavy beams which will support our cabin’s roof. It’s great having good people like that. Saturday the rains hit with a vengeance. We got the piers for a cabin up to the site and sorted out in order of their placement. Then we were too wet to go on. Maybe tomorrow we will get the piers in the ground! Finally, we have begun to build our cabin.