The adventure goes on …
Image: Our new home.
A vibrant green triangle – that’s my first impression of our new home as we pass through the narrows near the head of Port Neville Inlet. A vibrant green triangle pointed uphill towards a background of mountains, with the broad base coming down to meet the shoreline. Two deer calmly graze seaweed at the edge of a creek.
Image: Sunlight beaming down on our new home.
Finally the northwest gales had caught up to us. We had deeked into the Broughten Archipelago, avoiding the worst of the gale winds, but now we were trapped. Just around the point from where we were anchored was Port Neville. Between us and our final destination were a few scant miles of water, but Johnstone Strait was in a distinct snit, and we could have had a million miles to go for all the difference it was making.
Image: Towing the Awen around Cape Caution
Just as in rock climbing, every journey, like every ascent, has a “crux” point, a passage through the eye of a needle, a time of greatest struggle or danger. Although I didn’t know it when I got out of our bunk this morning, today was going to be the “crux” point of our journey south.
Image: Towing the Awen out from under the clouds
We’ve been preparing for this moment since December. Finally, we are underway. Everything has been packed. Our two boats, the Moody Blue and the Awen are ready to go. Our newest “vessel”, the Kipper’s Folly, a 21′ herring skiff (bought to be a landing craft at our new home), is loaded with plants and looks like a floating greenhouse.
Image: Our home in Prince Rupert
Wow! How do we accumulate so much stuff? Having sold our home, we now had to pack all our belongings (or at least the important things) into the fish hold of our old fishing boat, the Moody Blue.
Image: A Cabin in the Woods (‘Lyle and Owen’s Cabin’ by Debbie Reusch)
We’ve really done it now! The reality came home with a shock that left me feeling momentarily breathless, slightly panicky, elated, and excited all in the same instant. I was handing over the keys to the Creag Faoiltiarna Fitheach, our home for the past ten years.
Eelgrass beds are both ecologically valuable and potentially threatened. They fall within the “critical” category of DFO’s habitat rating system, and DFO has concluded that eelgrass has characteristics which meet the criteria of an Ecologically Significant Species. The United Nations recently estimated a 15% loss in seagrass habitat globally over the last decade.
