Wednesday, December 16, 2015

Tuesday, 11August2015: Von Donop to Octopus Islands, BC

Weather:  Sunny and warm.  Winds:  Light and variable.  Seas:  Flat.

A departure from our regularly scheduled program.
When Strider was first bought, a rail mounted propane grill was needed.  Cooking inside a boat is difficult, particularly in the heat, lack of headroom and, most importantly, men are masters of the grill!  Just look at the Bayeux Tapestry.  It clearly shows men grilling meat before The Battle of Hastings!  Don't believe me?  Check the right hand side of this image.


A Magma Cabo was bought, primarily because it was the least expensive grill available and because it has the most surface area.  After years of faithful service, the grill's limitations had become evident, primarily:  It did not get hot enough.  Sure, it could cook sausages and roast some veggies, but it did not do well with a steak.  So, it was modified by drilling out the orifice.  While not recommended, it now puts out the heat searing steaks nicely!


Then one day, while doing a shelf check (strolling through the store to see if there was anything new), a Magma teflon-coated griddle was spotted.  I had to have it!  With it, culinary artistry on the back of the boat increased tremendously.  With the new and improved flame, the grill/griddle gets hot enough so vegetables can be stir fried, fish can be fried etc etc.


So what is the point of all this?  Only that one particularly gorgeous morning last August in Von Donop Inlet, some bread was getting stale and I was in the mood for french toast.  So, the grill was fired up and the bread slices were toasted on the grate.  Then, the griddle was thrown on and heated, butter added, toast dunked and made french toast!  All without heating up the inside of the boat.  Now if I can only figure out a way to make coffee on the grill....
We now return you to our regularly scheduled program.

After the breakfast above, we departed around 1100 and motored out of Von Donop around 1120 making a left turn into Sutil Channel.  Rounding the south end of Read Island, we continued to motor north in Hoskyn Channel, ducking between Read and Hoskyn Rock and Dunsterville Islet.   Intending to arrive at Surge Narrows at slack, we were going to be early and slowed to about 3 knots...we still arrived early.  Waiting for about 45min, watching two large power boats push through Beazly Passage and seeing a few more sailboats stack up behind us, I couldn't take it any longer and pushed into the current.

A big advantage Strider has is she can turn on a dime.  If at any point I felt we were in trouble, I could easily bail.  The disadvantage is she is under powered for such excursions:  She can make 6.5kts maximum.  It did not deter us and into the breach!  The passage was not difficult and I was able to give a play by play to Freestyle waiting to she what we did.  The eddies bounced us around a bit (radio call:  Dancing!).  The surprising part was even at near slack, there was 5kts of current slowing us to 1kt forward speed for about 5min.  A whale tour boat came out as we were headed in and was kind enough to slow down and minimize its wake as they passed by.  Very nice of them!

Once Strider was through, Freestyle came on through!  Awaiting us on the north side were 3 whale tour boats, obviously watching something, but we could not spot anything and they would not answer calls on 16.  Freestyle was first in our group to spot the orca, traveling south along the southwest shore of Maurelle Island.  3 of them, large, medium and small!  Kelly was enthralled.  Her first orca!  We drifted with the current to watch them breach, splash, spy...one even jumped over another!  After about 20min, we finally lost them in the waters between Peck and Quadra Islands.

The 3.5nm motor to Octopus Islands Marine Provincial Park was a fascinating study of Kelly, simultaneously ecstatic and horrified.  Ecstatic to finally see orca in the wild and horrified that man had caged these animals for entertainment purposes.

Freestyle, being the faster boat, was out of sight by the time we arrived at the south entrance to the park.  Motoring in, we spotted Freestyle in a quiet nook on the SW side of Octopus Island, anchored and finishing a stern tie.  By the time we arrived, the fenders were in place and Strider was rafted without incident.

This night's dinner was special!  Remember the clams dug at Von Donop the day before?  Yep, this night was the first of two night's meals.  At this point, we had no idea how many clams were in the bucket.  So I just started sorting and cleaning the outsides.  Three were found empty and full of mud and one was found dead.  Still, at roughly half the bucket, there were 140 clams for dinner!

The recipe was simple and straight forward.  Using the crab cooking equipment (capable of 95,000 btu), onion and garlic were sauteed in olive oil.  Then, a bottle of inexpensive white wine was added.  At boiling, the fresh-from-the-saltwater clams were added.  With this cooker, it took about 5min to cook the clams, which were scarfed down along with a fresh veggie plate.  Naturally, a white wine accompanied.  The ladies were a bit shy of the clams, but ate their share...even Em who is normally a very picky eater.  RT and I could not get enough.  Lovely, simply lovely.

The juice was retained and boiled it down for later use.  Because the clams did not have a fresh water rinse, the concentrate was very salty, something to compensate for later.

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