Trip Story

I woke up early and started checking the weather because I wanted to start getting down toward Victoria where Julie would be flying in the next night. That weather was not looking good with strong winds and thunderstorms forecast. I called the flight service station and told the briefer where I wanted to go and ask for a abbreviated briefing because a full briefing takes a very long time and includes all kinds of details including practically if any light bulbs are burnt out at nearby airports. That briefer said “you want a abbreviated briefing? No way in hell! How’s that for an abbreviated briefing?” We both laughed and then he explained to me about the winds low clouds and thunderstorms in the mountains. We discussed options and I decided that I might have a chance to make it down to Kamloops if I left soon and that would put me in a slightly better position to try and get farther south the next day.

I got right over to the plane and started packing up for the flight. A nice older guy came by the plane and introduced himself as the airport manager. I started to tell him something about myself and the plane, he interrupted me and said he knows all about me and said “he thinks he’s the only person I had not met yet.” He then drove up and down the runway to make sure there were no birds or Canadian geese on it and I took off and headed South.

There were certainly a lot of clouds around but it was very passable. When I got to Kamloops Lake it looked like I could keep going South and make it pretty far, but I had not found my paper map for the next leg and I was not going to go in the mountains just a relying on the GPS unit so I went and landed at Kamloops for the night. Getting that map turned out to take an enormous amount of time and effort that I won’t bore you with, but I finally was lucky enough to have someone bring me one from their home the next morning just as I was ready to leave.  I was not going to leave without it in my hand and I was getting pretty nervous that it might delay me a whole day just trying to find that map. I spent the rest of the day hanging around the plane on the ramp, I had quite a few visitors come by to chat about airplanes and flying including some of the  airline pilots.

I checked the weather online and then called flight service for another personal briefing. This time a different briefer and kind of a smart-aleck answer to my request for a briefing of going from my location to Victoria. He said ” to try and get to Victoria today, first answer is no, second answer is no and come to think of it,…….yes third answer is also no!” He then proceeded to tell me about the thunderstorms, low clouds, very strong turbulence and rain along my route that would make it impossible. I tried to ask a few questions and he just said, “I know you really want to go and you are trying to think of some way to make it alright but it is not going to be.”

So, I took my map and headed out to see for myself.  I’m comfortable with a exploratory excursion as long as I know I have super solid backup options and with the floats, I could use an airport or a lake (but with strong winds water would be hazardous). The first leg where I left Kamloops headed west and then down south towards the mouth of the Fraser River Canyon went pretty well, it was definitely windy with off-and-on rain showers but the cloud bases were quite consistent at 2000 feet above the river and they did not seem to be looking like they were going to drop down behind me. As I got to the decision point of going down the Fraser River or heading back up North and across to the next valley to the West, it was a very simple decision. The clouds were extremely low, if not completely filling the Fraser River Valley to the South, so I turned North West. I knew I had my next stopping point airport just about 20 miles up river (Lillooet) and that leg went well (It was just very turbulent). I did get to see a rainbow below me during that leg.

Rainbows occur when the sunlight is coming from behind you and when you’re flying that means that rainbows are beneath you when you fly through the rain and get a shot of sunlight. As I passed the Lillooet Airport I had enough cell tower strength that I gave Julie a call with my phone plugged into the intercom system. It was fun to have a chat with her and share that I still really did not know if I would make it to Victoria that night, but if not, I would probably make it the next night.

As I headed to the West the turbulence really picked up and I got a lot of head winds. The predominant wind was coming from the West and funneling in through the valleys. I then stopped at Pemberton Airfield to get some gas before I made the run South toward Chilliwack. The strange thing there was I was getting bounced around like crazy all the way down to treetop level and I couldn’t believe the windsocks were just hanging down, but all the wind was only above the trees. The flight down to Chilliwack went okay, a lot more rain and now there were low clouds scattered around, but they were easy to navigate. As I came out the valley into the open flat land with Chilliwack in the distance visibility was fabulous and the clouds were much much higher, I could tell that I would be making it to Victoria that night. I stopped at Chilliwack just to stretch my legs and get my head around the radio frequencies for the next leg, it was quite windy, my airspeed indicator was saying 35mph when I was parked!

The map for Victoria was quite complicated and there were a number of routes I could possibly go.  I called Vancouver approach control on the phone and spoke to one of the guys their because I wanted to learn the preferred method and I like to be with flight following but it wasn’t clear to me, who I would be talking to, when. He was quite casual and agreed that the maps are very confusing. Basically his theory was avoid as much as you can and talk to as few as you can. I headed out carefully navigating around mining and blasting areas and some restricted areas. I called up some control towers along the way just to advise them I was possibly in their airspace as I passed by and they did not seem very interested, they even bounced me back and forth between them both saying I was closer to the other ones air space and then cut me loose as soon as they had a chance. Even Victoria approach control told me that I was calling them too early and to call them again when I was a lot closer. Everything went quite smoothly and I was very excited to get into Victoria, get the rental car and check into the bed and breakfast so I would be ready to pick Julie up later that night.

 It was great to pick up Julie (after-midnight). She had had a very long day getting everything finished up so she could get on her way and she even got a parking ticket at the airport when she was trying to get her baggage unloaded. Also they lost the bag with all her clothes and that caused some extra delays. We had a relaxed morning and the bed and breakfast and they made us a fabulous breakfast. Then it was off to buy some fishing licenses and on to visit Butchart Gardens. We had a beautiful dinner overlooking the bay and watching those little water taxis.

Julie spent some time getting work done at the B&B and I went and found some inner tubes that I could make soft dock bumpers with for when we would be tying up to the boat dock at Back Eddy Marina about a week. It was a beautiful day to fly and Victoria was gorgeous. We flew over Cowichan Lake on our way to Tofino.  The mountains and scenery were gorgeous, it was very exciting to see all the places that we were going to be flying in the next few days. At the airport we were chatting with the car rental lady and mentioned that we were looking to go halibut fishing but did not have anything scheduled yet. She texted a friend of hers that does charters.  He texted back that he was available tomorrow. She spoke very highly of him and through some texting we made an appointment to meet him at the dock at the South end of the peninsula in Ucluelet at 6:30 the next morning.  We checked into our air B&B house. Then we went into town and had a late lunch at the Schooner Restaurant. It felt wonderful to be out on the patio enjoying the blue skies and ocean air. Julie had a oyster combination plate and then we shared a brie stuffed halibut fillet dish that was incredible. We felt Fabulous with our choice to visit Tofino.

We met Darren, (Island’s finest Sport Fishing and his boat (Miss Guided)) at the dock and headed out on a beautiful morning with blue skies and hardly any swells. We went out to a bank about 8 miles offshore in about 200 feet of water. Darren dropped anchor and put down a big basket of fish scraps to attract halibut. We then proceeded to visit with Darren and wait and wait (we were there about 3 hours with no bite!). We talked about a lot of the problems with the environment and the problems with management of the fishing industry. I had asked about some big commercial fishing boats we saw at the docks when we were coming out because I could not believe that I saw the same big bottom scraping plates that are now outlawed in Mexico because the way that type of fishing works is they take something the size of a two car garage door and drop it to drag the bottom on each side of the boat then they have a monster purse net behind that and all the things that get dragged up off the bottom go into the net. Then they dump it on the deck and keep the Rockfish they want and throw everything else dead overboard. Apparently that type of fishing for Rockfish is legal in the area even though one of the things it of course drags up is halibut, (see Living Oceans report https://www.livingoceans.org/sites/default/files/bycatch_BC_Bottom_Trawl_Fishery_0.pdf )  The boats are not licensed to catch halibut so they just throw it all over but at that point the halibut have been killed so it ruins the halibut population. In the meantime they put more and more restrictions on the private halibut fishing. We were each only allowed to keep one halibut a day and to maximum. Also the size limit for halibut keeps getting reduced and now write about 48 lb is the maximum you can keep. The rest have to be let go. All of that when bottom traveling is allowed to continue in the area. I sure have a poor opinion now of the British Columbia Fisheries Department.

Anyway back to the fishing story. We then moved over to another part of the bank and Darren dropped a another bag of fish scraps. Within about 45 minutes I had a strong bite on my pole and there was another strong bite on one of Julie’s two poles right after that. Darren grabbed Julie’s pole to get it ready for her and realized that he was hooked on the same fish that I had on my pole. Just as we were figuring that out I pointed out to Julie that she had a bite on her other pole and she grabbed that herself.  As I pulled in mine and Darren kept the other line as much as he could out of the way Julie pulled hers in by herself. It was really exciting to suddenly have two big halibut on deck and especially when they were both so close to the maximum size limit mine was about 50 lbs and Julie’s was 45.

There is a chance mine was a few centimeters over the length limit, but after it was banged on the nose a few times it seemed like it was exactly at the length limit allowed. We then did some trolling for salmon and caught two salmon and one more small halibut that Darren put that Halibut on his license because Julie and I had limited on halibut with our one each.

Darren filleted up the halibut and we took the meat to a local processing shop where they will package it in 2 pound or less pieces vacuum packed and Flash Frozen. Then it will be shipped Frozen to our house.

We had a leisurely morning at the Air B&B place, it was kind of a one bedroom completely separate guest house.  We never even spoke to the hosts the whole time we were there. We went out flying around the area but there were a number of low cloud layers and even though it would have not been difficult to navigate underneath them, I did not know the weather patterns and did not want to get too far away from the airport and have some fog close in behind us, there was still a great deal of incredible scenery within about a 60 mile radius of the airport. It was really fun to see all the different cabins on the islands and along some of the inlets even though 90% of it is protected reserve and quite pristine. The salmon farming operations were interesting to see from the air but we had also heard from Darren that they are definitely a big environmental problem for the Marine ecosystem. We landed up one of the few fjord inlets that was very secluded and did some fishing. It was really fun to see how much Julie enjoyed it. The fish finder showed all kinds of schools of fish beneath us. It was raining on and off but that actually made it even more peaceful and beautiful. We were both just overjoyed to be out there floating in that gorgeous fjord. There was a small group of porpoises that was working around where we were and it was really cool to watch them, but we were ready to stop fishing if they were too close. Eventually we could see that the clouds were definitely dropping down lower in the direction of the airport and we headed back looking for bears along the shoreline but did not see any.

Day 17 was a rain day, but we had a great time. I went to the airport and spent some leisurely time organizing and cleaning things up with the plane and Julie did some badly-needed relaxing. We then went to a place called Picnic Charcuterie and got a bunch of gourmet meats and cheeses for a late lunch wine pairing back at the Air B&B.  Then we were off to take a walk in town and have the best sushi I have ever experienced (and that includes San Francisco). Everything was prepared perfectly and the sashimi just melted in your mouth with the most incredibly delicate flavors.

Day 18 was also a rain day. We went over to The Pointe Restaurant for brunch. It was a spectacular place with a round setting restaurant right over the rocks with the waves crashing in. We did not get a picture of him, but the chef was out on the rocks picking seaweed for dinner while we had our brunch. We took a walk on that beach and then went down to Long Beach. I’m not sure how long it is but it is incredibly long and filled with surfers (actually Tofino is a very big surfing town, it seems like all the locals have a surfboard and 90% of the tourists are there for surfing). It is a really neat beach because it is so flat that the tide goes very very far out. I’m including this next picture because it is so funny that as we were holding the camera for a selfie and a small wave hit our feet and we both looked down at our wet feet just as the shutter clicked. Julie did a romantic sand drawing and it was amazing to see that where she scratched the stick and actually in every square inch of that enormous Beach just the tiniest bit under the surface it was full of amazing red worms! We had such a nice time at The Pointe Restaurant that Julie somehow managed to get us dinner reservations. This place is booked months in advance but she talked them into a table. The food was beyond fabulous and they printed a menu personalized with our names on it. Also the Sommelier really enjoyed talking with Julie (she is a extremely knowledgeable winemaker). the Som brought us samples of many many British Columbia wines to try and comment on with different parts of our dinner.

The weather forecast improved just as it was time for us to leave Tofino and move on to the East side of Victoria Island. We had set up a stop along the way to tour an oyster farm and we were very excited to get going but I noticed that the airspeed indicator was showing 10 MPH when we were sitting still.  I had flown through a lot of rain and thought some must have gotten into the small tube that runs from the wing down to the indicator. I opened up the tube connections and blew it all out. Julie used the time to catch up on some correspondence. We took off to the West over Long Beach and then turned North along the shoreline to tour over the Tofino peninsula, fog was laying around the shoreline and it was gorgeous from the air. We then headed down to the southeast and in to Effingham fjord. It was an amazing place and it was so much fun to land next to the oyster farm. (Here is a You Tube of it

https://youtu.be/pbU4PFlWHOU).

The young manager came out in a boat and we followed him over into the protected floating bunkhouse area.

He was very happy to give us a tour.  He said it was a great break from sorting, cleaning and bagging oysters all day. We first were shown where the oyster start as little grains of sand, in the first receiving bin he said there were 5 million tiny oysters. As they grow the workers use larger and larger screens to sort out the ones big enough to be moved into the next bin and they work their way up in size until they are put in big baskets and dropped down deep on ropes into the fjord. One of the unique things about their oysters is that they occasionally pull them up and run them through a tumbler that chips off the edges and causes them to make a deeper cup that is a higher culinary quality product. They sort the oysters by size and then give them a big wash down to clean them up so they look more attractive. He shucked up some fresh oysters for Julie and I even had one. (here is a You Tube of our tour

https://youtu.be/CNl5_pkB9Os )

Julie bought a couple dozen at wholesale. Then he took us back over to the plane where we had lunch under the wing. He also showed us their “pet oyster” he said it is 40 years old! We then flew down to the mouth of the fjord because we were told that the salmon were biting down there. When we landed a small powerboat came out from a logging operation to check on us and when we said we were looking to fish he offered up the dock that they have anchored out from their operation. It was really fun too tie up and fish off the dock in the shade of the wing. We caught and released some salmon and rock fish. We then flew up the Port Alberni Inlet that almost goes all the way through to the East side of the island. It was amazing to see all the big bundles of logs tied up along the way waiting to go into the mills. We landed on Sproat Lake just to rinse the salt off of the plane and it was beautiful, lots of blue-green sandy shore lines and unfortunately tons of boats and jet skis to avoid. And we flew over the two Martin Mars Planes they are  the largest flying boat ever flown, with a wingspan a little wider than a 747, they can scoop up 7,200 gallons of water in 32 seconds and then dump it on a forest fire.

We then continued up over, Comox Lake and landed at Courtenay. Our hotel was great and we had a fabulous dinner at a place called Local’s restaurant. The strangest thing was that every patch of green grass around (and there were many) had the cutesiest black bunnies grazing wild!

Courtenay Airpark is a beautiful little community airstrip right next to the river.

Click here for Video of Landing

Float planes can land on the river and tie up at a dock or go to their ramp and they have a number of things called Gators that consists of the front end of a pickup truck and some long scissor lift rails that reach out and go under the float plane to pick it up and drive it wherever you want. Because we had wheels we landed on the runway and parked in the grass.

We headed up to explore some lakes about 60 miles north of Courtenay. The clouds were looking okay but the winds were a little more than I cared for to give Julie a smooth flight. The first place we went to was a crazy jigsaw puzzle shaped lake called Amor Lake, unfortunately because the winds were actually coming onto the lake from two different directions and there were a number of rocks and logs I spent a long time circling low over the lake and trying to decide on what would be a perfectly safe landing take-off and beaching location on that crazy lake (in rather turbulent air). I finally got my plan together, (not soon enough for Julie in the back seat). It was a beautiful Lake and we had a gorgeous little beach to tie up at. We spent some time there just enjoying ourselves but we could see in the southwest that a big black storm cloud was coming our way and because the winds seem to be so crazy around that lake I wanted to take off before anything changed. We looked at some other lakes but with the storm clouds and rain moving in we went back to Courtenay and had another wonderful dinner at the same restaurant.

This was the day to move from Courtenay across the channel and over to the Sunshine Coast on the mainland. We had reservations for 3 nights at the West Coast Wilderness Lodge. I had spent months trying to arrange for a safe parking spot at the marina next door to the lodge and finally had settled for a marginal docking spot. The Back Eddy Marina is known for ferocious currents coming through the dock area. Boats have been pushed sideways and smashed and logs and floating stumps have come through the dock area and badly damaged large boats. I spent a lot of time studying the tide and current charts for the area and had a specific time that I thought it would be safest to arrive and tie up to the dock.

The flight over the channel was beautiful and it was gorgeous coming into land by the marina we had a lot of debris consisting of logs and branches in the water to avoid but it worked out okay. I was not at all happy with my approach to the dock. The current was not bad at all at the time, but there were no flags around and the wind caught me off guard. Luckily with some hard paddling I saved it and we got onto the dock. Just 10 minutes later the current ramped-up and was extremely strong it was measured at about 14 knots at the time. If it had been moving like that when I came in I hope I would have realized how strong the current was and not attempted to go near the marina. If I had I surely would have been smashed into some boats. The resort was beautiful and we were very happy to be there for the next 3 nights, here is a YouTube walk-through of our room.
https://youtu.be/4Y4G7yGqpyc