Wild Rovers
- genofeve13
- Mar 13
- 33 min read
Updated: Mar 15
One spring, I decided to build a rowboat and row it up the entire coast of BC and Alaska. Well, that was the idea, anyway. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t just wake up one morning and take off. The idea sat in the pantry, alongside other dehydrated dreams, waiting to be rejuvenated when the conditions were right. With enough money in my pockets after a winter of work behind me, my craving for a summer adventure could finally be nourished.
The first hint of inspiration to row the coast began on another trip. Two friends and I were biking across Canada, and took the ferry through BC’s Inside Passage from Prince Rupert to Port Hardy. Over 22 hours, the ferry glided along the misty channels, past cascading waterfalls and lonely inlets, illuminated by the beams of lighthouses. We made a couple of stops into small communities along the way. The stops were short - too short to get any sense of place and people.
Then, there were all the places in between - they passed in a rainforest green blur while I napped, daydreamed and repacked my bike bags. Occasionally, I stopped to take in the scene, and wondered what it would be like to fully immerse myself in this landscape, under my own power.
Very rough outline of our route.
The thought scared me more than it excited me. Despite growing up along the water and working in all sorts of nautical environments - on ships, at lighthouses, on docks - I do not consider myself a “water person,” per se. For one, I’m not a good swimmer, and not for lack of trying.
In high school, during our gym-class swimming unit, I was the second-worst swimmer and only because the other contender was the girl who wore an oversized T-shirt over her bathing suit and refused to let go of the pool’s edge. I was otherwise athletic and generally good at most sports. My method was simple: do everything at maximum effort. This tactic worked well on dry land - but not so much in the water.
Water can be downright disdainful towards effort. It seems to reward energy conservation, above enthusiasm. Water recognizes things that are like itself. Jellyfish, for example, are 95% water, don’t have a real skeleton, much less a brain, and can get away with the most pathetic excuse for propulsion and still thrive. Meanwhile, at lane swim, my maximum-intensity flutter kick somehow propels me backward while two elderly women glide past with ease, swapping mustard-pickle recipes and hot obituary gossip.
To be a water person, you must be like water: fluid, flowing, unresisting. I am none of those things. I am stiff, unbending, and dense. I do not slither or glide; I push against water with all the grace of a bobbing, weatherbeaten log. Should I become shipwrecked, I have very little belief in my ability to swim to safety. My only hope would be a fortuitous wave dumping me ashore, lest I become a deadhead.
Despite growing up on the coast, the concept of currents, whirlpools and races still felt conceptual and not truly understood - something that happened “out there”, accompanied by a vague hand gesture aimed generally at the sea.
As a child I was utterly terrified of the water, having experienced what I perceived as a near Edmund Fitzgerald-esque nautical disaster in our family sailboat. In reality, it was just my father’s inexperienced sailing that led us to being stranded on a beach for a few hours. While it may have not been the gales of November coming early, the stiff July breeze that careened us to the beach, seemed just as catastrophic in my 8 year old psyche.
The truth of the matter is, I am a chickenshit from way back. It wasn’t just the ocean that scared me. Carwashes sent me into a panic - they reminded me of the movie “Maximum Overdrive”, which is a film about machines coming to life and turning against their creators. Not that I had seen the movie, but some of the concepts from the film were used in the music video for AC/DC’s “Who Made Who.” From that, I had seen enough.
Simply hearing the title of a movie could send my imagination spiraling into the maelstrom. That year, both the “The Three Amigos” and “Grease” sounded too macabre to risk a look-see at the theater.
This is why, when I told my parents that I would be rowing the Inside Passage, they couldn’t believe it. Perpetually compared to my 8 year old self, they still imagined my panic attacks at the mere sight of a boat.
Then there was the matter of their own fears.
“Your mother and I want to you to abort this trip immediately”, said my father on the phone a mere week ahead of my departure date. “Dad, I’ve already built the boat, taken a paddling course, and everything. I’m going.”
“Gen, there are grizzly bears everywhere over there. They’re dangerous…” My dad went on to recount a gruesome tale of a woman who had been mauled to death by a grizzly in Alberta. I was already familiar with the story, as he had sent it to me as an attachment as part of my birthday email in November.
“Well, that’s why I’m bringing Reggie…he’s very good at chasing off bears!” And it was true. Over the years, Reggie had run several bears out of bush camps, off trails, and up trees, showing no fear while instinctively keeping people safe. His prowess wasn’t limited to bears. He was physically and verbally abusive to any critter that he deemed unwelcome in camp: mice, squirrels, raccoons, seals, and even floating logs that vaguely looked like seals. I trusted him completely, and so he was officially delegated to camp security.
One thing that Reggie and I shared was a healthy unease around water. Reggie, with husky in his bloodline, would do anything to avoid the water. Some of his greatest athletic feats were performed simply so he wouldn’t get his toes wet.
The boat took me about six weeks to build. My friend Ian generously gave me a warm, dry space in which to work at his carpentry shop in Old Masset, BC. I treated the project like a full-time job, playing both the role of employee and as an oppressive tyrant boss, in a time before unions or work standards existed.
I could be found at any hour, high on epoxy fumes, covered in sawdust, toiling away. So consumed was I, that I’d forget to eat, sometimes sleep on the cement floor, and neglect all other forms of self-care. Occasionally, concerned friends would stop by with food. “You’re living like an animal!” exclaimed my friend Tiff one afternoon, watching in horror as I devoured a bag of cheddar popcorn that she had brought me. My feet shuffled, rattling the empty cans of flavored tuna I’d discarded on the floor over the past few days.
“I know,” I sputtered, popcorn flying from my mouth, “but this fiberglass isn’t going to sand itself.”
Sometimes, late at night, a man on a bicycle would knock on the shop door and ask if I wanted to buy dried fish and sG̲íw (the Haida word for dried seaweed). I quickly became his most reliable customer. With every bite of sG̲íw and every new coat of epoxy, both my boat and I were slowly becoming more seaworthy.
It was a push to the very end, but the boat was finished the morning of the date I had arbitrarily set to leave: June 6th. The paint was still tacky as I loaded the boat on the back of my friend Alden’s massive rock truck.
Alden had visited the shop the night before, as I was fairing my final ore, and while Ian helped me build a boat trailer made of 2 x 2’s and bicycle tires.
“When are you leaving?” Alden asked.
“Tomorrow morning on the ferry” I said.
“How are you getting there?”
“I have no idea.”
In my singular focus on getting the boat built and packed for the trip, I had not really thought of logistics, like how I was going to get me, my boat, and Reggie to the ferry terminal 100 kilometers away. The next morning at 7 a.m., on his way to a job, Alden plopped me, Reggie, and all our stuff at the ferry landing in Skidegate. It would take me 5 ferry rides - totalling over 5 days of travel - to get to our starting point of Salt Spring Island, BC.
I had originally wanted to launch from Bellingham, Washington, the terminus station of Alaska’s version of the Inside Passage Ferry. That changed, however, on a layover in Ketchikan, after I launched the boat for the first time.
Though I was pleased that it actually floated, I quickly realized I couldn’t row the boat effectively. The oars refused to lift out of the water. It was an unceremonious launch. I floundered a few feet off the docks, barely able to propel myself back from whence I came. On a positive note, Reggie immediately understood the assignment, and jumped into the boat for the trial, seemingly unphased by the failure.
It was clear that I would need to make some adjustments to my setup, and returning back to Haida Gwaii to where all my tools were was out of the question. I was already underway and the trip had started, symbolically, at least. I would need to borrow tools to make changes now. My sister lived on Salt Spring, which was a couple of ferry rides away from Bellingham. Plus, my mom “just happened” to be coming for a visit from New Brunswick. I could hole up on Salt Spring and borrow tools from my sister and her friends to make the necessary tweaks.
As I made the adjustments over the next week down at the Fulford Harbour docks, I gathered a small following of interested folk, ranging from knowledgeable mariners to mentally unstable drifters, all giving their advice on repairs, potential routes, or just wanting a chat.
Finally after a few tests, I got the oar ergonomics right. I also purposefully tipped the boat, which was actually really difficult to do with the oars on. Pleased that the bulkheads for the separate hatches did their job and the boat maintained buoyancy should the unthinkable happen, I felt like I was pretty well ready to go. At this point, ironically, I had walked the boat and its heavy contents much further than I had ever rowed it.
The trip began as a trial by fire. I had never rowed any distance before, Reggie had never been in a small boat on open water, and the entire journey had existed only in theory. On the day that I figured out the oars, I took the boat out for a test ride, and sort of glided into a “soft launch” from Fulford Harbour to Menhinick Beach, a distance of only about 2 nautical miles.
I quietly left the docks, with Reggie in his own special hatch padded with his dog bed.
Feeling that the boat had a bit of a starboard list, I pulled over on a beach to adjust my gear. Reggie took the opportunity to leap out and sniff around on shore. When the time came to leave again, I called him over, but Reggie fled to higher ground. In a tone usually reserved for infants, I said “ok then, I guess you’ll have to stay here” and feigned rowing away to see what he would do. He followed along on shore watchfully, staying parallel with the boat while keeping a healthy distance from the water.
Just as I was ready to end this game and pull back to shore, a man appeared from the grassy trail leading to the beach and yelled “Is this your dog!?”. “Ughhhh” I whispered under my breath, thinking that I was going to be told off for having a dog off leash.
“Yes he’s mine!”
“Want me to grab him?”
“Yeah sure, thanks!”
As though it was the next logical step, the man took off all of his clothes, then walked over to grab Reggie by his harness. He had a bushy white beard and white hair….everywhere. The carpet matched the curtains. He waded out knee deep into the water with Reggie.
He looked like a wizard and had an Irish lilt, which added to the whimsy.
We chatted for a while.
“How far have you come and where are you going?” he asked.
“Well, I’ve come about half a mile so far, and I’m going to Alaska,” I said.
“WOW! Alaska! I wish you fair winds and following seas on this boat of yours…what’s she called?”
Being an Irishman, I knew he’d get the reference when I told him, “She’s called Wild Rover.”
“Wild Rover? After the Irish song?”
“Yes. It’s one of my favorite traveling songs, and I thought it appropriate, because I have my rover here, Reggie, and it’s a rowboat, so it has a double meaning…as in row-ver.”
“Very clever. Blessed be your journey for you and your rover here.”
Just as he said it, another man showed up, stripped down naked and splashed into the water. The Irishman said to his fellow skinny dipper: “This lady is rowing to Alaska!”
“Whoa! Right on! Safe journeys!” said the man.
I am rowing to Alaska.
It was the first time it seemed real. I smiled.
As I rowed away, the wizard began to sing:
Well I’ve been a wild rover for many’s a year,
And I spent all me money on whiskey and beer,
But now I’m returning with gold in great store,
And I never will play the wild rover no more
The Irishman put his hands together in a prayer position while the sun beamed down on him - he looked angelic. He was still only knee deep in the water, leaving absolutely nothing to the imagination, though it gave me new appreciation for how much of the body is involved in hitting those high notes.
And it’s NO, NAY, NEVER!
No nay never no more,
Will I play the wild rover,
No never no more!
I could not think of a more fitting send off on a journey that promised to be full of adventure and surprises.
The next day, I rowed 7 miles to Beddis Beach, with my sister accompanying me in a kayak she had borrowed. I was now set to leave the island and really launch on the trip, having been satisfied with the outcomes of my trials. The boat handled well, and Reggie, other than his minor defiance the day before, seemed up for the journey. I spent that night camped out on the beach with my mother and Reg.
The morning of my “official send off”, my mother, niece, sister and a couple of random beachgoers who happened to be there, watched me make my final preparations. I prefer not to make a big deal of my send offs, so five people was quite enough of a crowd.
My mother knows my aversion to making things into a big production. Though she stated that she had come out west quite by chance to visit my sister and niece, I suspected that she had flown across the country to watch me row away in what she imagined was my own homemade sarcophagus.
At the water’s edge, I fiddled with the awning I had designed to protect Reggie from the sun and rain, but he kept sticking his head out the wrong way and lifting all the fabric up from the velcro'd deck, and then jumping out of the boat.
Mom, looking on in concern, said: “Maybe Reggie shouldn’t come…you should leave him with me.”
“Reggie is fine!” I snapped, “He is coming on the trip.”
Though my parents may think of me as that scared 8 year old girl on the sailboat, in reality, I am more like a version of my 15-year old self - snarky, permanently annoyed, and never wrong. I took the awning down, bunched it up and stored it in another hatch - I would deal with it later. With all eyes on me, I felt the pressure to leave. I said goodbye, gave my mom a hug, and pushed off.
“Be careful!” she called, teary-eyed, as I took the first few strokes of what would be a 790-nautical-mile journey.
My sister accompanied me by kayak for the first few miles as she made her way back to Ganges to return the boat she had borrowed. All the while, Reggie was content, though I sensed he was trying to figure out his role in this new environment.
The first 40 miles, paddled over a few days, were a gift. It was easy going through the calm waters of the Gulf Islands. Eventually, we crossed over Georgia Strait to Lasqueti Island.
Reggie, though apprehensive, would get into the boat after some coercion. We never rowed more than a few hours before stopping to visit a new island, hitchhiking to a grocery store, and once I even became accidentally employed as a carpenter for a wealthy woman on Decourcey island for a few days. Reggie got lots of breaks, and was never confined to the boat for long stretches. Life was beautiful.
As the days turned to weeks, my confidence in my boat and my abilities on the water grew stronger. Even my hands were adjusting to the voyage - they were initially grotesque with painful blisters formed by repeated friction from feathering the oars. My fears diminished to the low level of “healthy anxiety” which I always carry on long wilderness trips. This manifested positively as obsessively checking maps and charts for potential landings, double checking timings for transiting rapids at slack tide, and checking the marine weather forecast.
Despite my vigilance, we had our share of bloopers and scary moments, but we also had moments of pure joy, fun and chance encounters with incredible people and wildlife. All in all, we had so far come out unscathed. Or so I thought.
The more we spent time in the boat, the more Reggie’s uneasiness amplified. My newfound confidence and boldness did not appease him. His low whines in the boat grew to whimpers, then moans, and eventually guttural cries I had never heard come from Reggie - or any other dog for that matter. He also began to smell mysteriously like cheese.
At first, on shore, he would still come when called, but eventually “come here” became synonymous with “run away.” More than once, I looked up from packing to see nothing but a furry bum disappearing into the woods in the opposite direction.
We couldn’t carry on like this, but I remained optimistic that we were simply adjusting to our new nautical rhythm, and that I could find a solution that would work for both of us.
By the time we were rowing north of Powell River, two weeks into the trip, traces of modern civilization were washing away like my defiant beach poops in the intertidal zone. The hand of Vancouver’s wealthy cabin owners was loosening its grip on the islands further north. Here, the land was largely untouched, no longer riddled with “No Trespassing” signs, rendering my excremental rebellion entirely uncontroversial. Roads and infrastructure gave way to wild shores and unbroken forests. It would remain that way, more or less, all the way to Prince Rupert, nearly 400 miles on.
Each morning, I checked my charts for the longest stretches of uninterrupted shoreline and planned routes that followed them closely. I would let Reggie out, and he would follow along on shore. It seemed like a good compromise.
As a result, Reggie was less stressed, he got to explore the shoreline on terra firma, and I didn’t have to feel guilty about confining him to a boat he clearly didn’t want to be in. It was worth rowing the extra miles each day. Under normal rowing circumstances, without a distressed four-legged companion to consider, I would have crossed bays from point to point instead of sweeping along the shore. Some bays were so large that crossing them directly would leave me a mile or more offshore. Instead, I swooped into the bays so that Reggie could see me.
At first, the plan worked well. Reggie scampered along and we moved at roughly the same pace. When he reached difficult sections - large boulders or rocky bluffs - he would disappear into the woods while I waited on the other side for him to find a route around. A few minutes later he would emerge beyond the obstacle, bark to let me know he could see me, and off we would go again.
At rivers and larger bays, the plan was to land, put Reggie in the boat, and ferry him across so he could continue on shore. This was where things got complicated. There wasn’t always a natural place to land, like a sandy beach, where I could safely grab Reg and pull him into the boat. Unlike a plastic kayak, I couldn’t just drag my wood and fiberglass boat onto rocks without risking damage. Sometimes I did that anyway, and paid the price in making repairs while underway.
If it was rocky, I would try to find a suitable ledge to nose up to, but with waves and shifting conditions I often couldn’t stay long enough to convince Reggie to come near me.
At these crossings he would whimper on shore, searching for another way around. Eventually realizing there was no viable option, he would bark to summon me back in. Inevitably, he would regret his request, knowing it meant he would have to get into the bad floaty thing.
In such moments, I would row a few hundred feet away to force the decision. This, in turn, triggered separation anxiety and fear of abandonment. On at least three occasions, Reggie took my bluff seriously and chose to swim rather than accept a ride in the boat. One time, he even braved swimming through a raft of ornery sea lions who circled my boat and Reggie with what felt like nefarious curiosity.
Where Reggie truly thrived, was in camp at night. As I slept, I heard the occasional rustling of bushes, a bit of barking, and sometimes a splash. In the morning more often than not, I would find Reggie proudly at his post at the base of a tree, having spent the night forcing a couple of camp-plundering raccoons to seek refuge in high branches. The only time he was truly relaxed was when we were both safely on shore. Even then, I worried that he took his night guard duties so seriously that he was not getting enough rest.
It was stressful for me, too. I had set out on this trip to confront my own fears and insecurities on the water, and to experience the wonders of the coast. Above all else, I had wanted to share that experience with my most trusted companion. Instead, our trip was shaping up to be a battle of wills, rather than a collaborative adventure.
In Port Hardy, at the northern end of Vancouver Island, I would need to come to a decision: end the trip there, continue on as planned, or some other solution. The most reasonable route north from Hardy involves making a 10 mile crossing to the mainland, with scant landable islands across the way. Once on the mainland side, you must pick your way along the coast, transiting past the notorious and aptly named “Cape Caution.” The area around the cape is open to the full force of the pacific swells, with few protected landings for a further 20 miles, until you are finally wrapped in the sheltered embrace of the Inside Passage. If you do not choose the proper weather window, the seas can turn perilous.
With the weather looking no bueno for a crossing for the next few days, Reggie and I stayed at a cheap Airbnb, while contemplating our next moves. Fortuitously, we happened to pull into town during the creatively named Filomi Days (That’s FI-shing, LO-gging, MI-ning). The town was alive with activity. While in Hardy, I also ran into Erik, a red headed school teacher from Kansas who was also kayaking the Inside Passage, with whom I spent a few windbound days in Sayward a week or so back.
Erik also was trying to decide whether to paddle the Cape Caution section. Having never kayaked in his life until this trip, and growing up in landlocked farmland, he was not very confident in his abilities to self rescue in rough conditions. We had a kind of “I’ll do it if you do it” pact regarding Cape Caution. However, after we were both invited to a Filomi Days bush party, and Erik drank himself into oblivion, I found myself carrying him on my shoulders to the water and plunking him down into Reggie’s hatch. Erik’s arms and legs dragged in the water while Reggie sat on top of him, and I rowed his lifeless body across the harbour, then helped him walk wobbly legged to his hostel. As I felt his dead weight on my shoulders, it seemed like a metaphor for what it might be like to paddle across Cape Caution with a person even less qualified than me - I needed a buoy, not more lead.
Though the answer was obvious, I am ashamed to say that it was still a painful decision to decide to forgo rowing the Cape Caution section. To me, it represented a failure to do the trip in its entirety as I had imagined, and to confront the portion of the route that scared me the most. But, the more I thought about it, the more I realized I would never be able to forgive myself for not only subjecting Reggie to guaranteed anxiety from making a 10 mile open water crossing, but also putting both of us in danger if the weather didn’t behave. I couldn’t tell if I was using Reggie’s anxiety as a scapegoat to avoid facing my own fears, or if I was doing this strictly for his benefit. I vowed to return to Hardy to row the section someday.
Still, I believed the trip could be salvaged. It wasn’t perfect, and Reggie wasn’t always thrilled, but letting him run along the shore seemed a fair compromise to keep moving forward. The novelty of charting a whole new course was magnetic.
Besides, we were entering prime grizzly country - the Great Bear Rainforest. By skipping Cape Caution, we left the sketchiest waters behind, but the hazards on land carried their own weight. I would need my trusted bodyguard by my side.
I pored over charts and looked at the ferry schedules, and decided to take the ferry to Bella Bella, and then another ferry to Bella Coola - a community 80 nautical miles off the route I had originally planned to row. It was a perfect solution - I would see places I have always been curious about, including the ghost town of Ocean Falls. I would row roughly the same distance that I would be missing by skipping the Cape Caution section, and I would see a coastline seldom visited by other rowers and paddlers.
A guy I had met during the Filomi Days Festivities gave me his phone number and told me that if he could help me at all with my boat, to give him a ring. When I decided to take the ferry, I gave him a call, and he agreed to drop me, Reggie, and my boat off near the ferry terminal. I camped at a rest stop that night and sat at a picnic table overlooking the water, watching the Filomi Days Fireworks. It seemed a fitting end to the challenges of this section.
Resolved to stay positive, I looked forward to the novelty of going to Bella Coola. The trip involved taking two ferries: First, from Hardy to Bella Bella on the Northern Adventure, and then the Nimpkish from Bella Bella to Bella Coola. The Nimpkish was a cute, 110-foot ferry. The Nimpkish crew were darlings as well - they were completely enthused to help me on my way. They grabbed the BC Ferries soccer mom SUV and helped me slide Wild Rover as far as I could into the back, to make the ferry loading easier. She’s an 18 foot boat, and only about 7 feet fit into the car, so I walked behind and held onto the stern so it didn’t tip down and scrape the deck.
Once on board, the crew signaled me to follow them - there were two passenger lounges, and they closed off one of them so that I could use it as my own personal space on the 10 hour journey, and also so that Reggie could hang out with me. They stocked the fridge with snacks of veggie sticks, cheese and crackers. Then, I was invited up to the bridge, where I steered the ship for an hour as we looked over the charts and referenced the shore for appropriate camping spots. I learned that between Ocean Falls and Bella Coola, there were very few spots to land, as most of the terrain involved cliffs plunging straight into the ocean.
As I stood at the helm of the ship, the conversation naturally steered to bears. The area around Bella Coola is particularly known for grizzlies. The terrain is such that ocean access is fairly infrequent, making it more likely to encounter bears and other wildlife at the few access points that there are, as they are often low points on the land, that tend to also have freshwater sources in the form of creeks.
The captain then told me a story about some of his own adventures on the coast. He frequently would take his boat to distant islands and go beachcombing alone. He recounted a tale from when he went to Campania Island on such a trip, and was mauled by a grizz. He stepped onto the beach, and immediately saw the bear charging him. As the bear mauled him, the captain tried to defend himself with his leatherman, but ended up cutting his own hand in the process, as the unlocking knife blade folded back on itself in the struggle. The bear eventually backed off. In addition to his knife wound, the captain had sustained injuries from the mauling, and had to drive himself, bloody and bruised, almost a full day to seek medical attention in the nearest community. It was a sobering tale, outlining how quickly and unpredictably bear attacks can happen.
After a brief stop and tantalizing preview of Ocean Falls, we arrived in Bella Coola, and the crew graciously helped me move Wild Rover to a gravel ramp not far from the ferry landing, again employing the use of the BC Ferries SUV. I spent the night there and rowed to the docks into town the next morning.
Bella Coola started off rough. When I first pulled into the docks, Reggie had an encounter with a young pitbull who immediately attacked him and clamped onto his lip. After I broke the fight up, the result was a lot of blood that made me worry that Reg had been severely injured and would need stitches. Once the bleeding stopped and I got the wound cleaned up with iodine, it was not as bad as I initially thought. The end result was a small puncture, and a fuller, plumper lip, that made him look like he had a botox pout. I bought each of us a burger to calm our nerves.
When I returned to the docks in the late afternoon, I met a group of fishermen who invited me over to their boat for supper which turned into a lively party in my honour. “Nobody ever comes here!” said Rob, a young curly haired fisherman who offered up his vacant boat as sleeping quarters for the night. His father ran grizzly charters and there were no trips booked the following day.
We were invited to feast at Dave’s boat - an eccentric and gregarious fisherman who had spent his life fishing the coast. We drank beer, pulled some crabs from a nearby trap, and Dave prepared potatoes, fresh salad, and steak. He was a host possessed. The picture of generosity, Dave insisted on making a feast for Reggie.
Unbeknownst to me until it was too late, Reggie was fed 2 pounds of burger and also an entire roast, pre ripped by Dave’s teeth, mouth to swollen mouth, in a bizarrely intimate session with the host with the most.
“Dave, you’re going to give him diarrhea!” I heard Rob say.
“PFFFT! He’ll be fine” retorted Dave.
Through our conversations, I learned that the wind funnels reliably down from the mountains every day at 11a.m. There was also the matter of Mesachie nose - an infamous point located at the confluence of three arms. The wind there creates a turbulent “washing machine effect" that even local fishermen in larger boats try to avoid. So much for evading danger by skipping over the Cape Caution section! The good news was, if I made it past there, I would be rewarded with a good camping spot and a relaxing soak at Eucott Hot Springs - a day’s row away.
“Well guys” I said at midnight after several beers “I’d better hit the sack…I’ve got to get out of here at 4 a.m. to make it well past Musatchie nose.”
“Oh no you won’t!” slurred Dave as he slapped the table. “Have another beer with us and I’ll see to it that I give you a lift to Mesachie Nose at 7 a.m.” Not one to turn down a few more laughs and good conversation, I obliged for another hour. At some point, I ran up to the wharfinger office to use the bathroom, and left Reggie on the boat with the fishermen. When I returned, I found Reggie standing on the docks soaking wet. He had apparently panicked when I left, and fell off the boat looking for me. Thankfully, one of the fishermen heard the splash and pulled him up out of the drink. For Reggie, it was another notch on the ol’ anxiety belt.
True to his word, the next morning, a severely hungover Dave gave me, Reggie, and Wild Rover a lift to the famed Mesachie nose. It was flat calm and we towed Wild Rover by her bowline behind Dave’s boat. She tracked fairly well if we didn’t go faster than 7 knots. From Musatchie, it was only about 10 miles (3 hours) to Eucott Hot Springs, making for a fairly easy intro back to the water after having spent the previous week on the party circuit, rather than a rowing trip.
I thought taking this long break would have appeased Reg and acted like a reset for his anxiety. Yet, after only 3 miles of rowing, he began to whine again. He whined like I had never heard before. There was a desperation to it. His whole body shook and his eyes seemed to be searching. He suddenly jumped onto the polished wooden deck of the boat, and slipped back and forth on the bow. “GET OFF REGGIE!” I said, pulling him back down into his hatch. He had never ever jumped onto the deck before.
This continued on for another 2 miles. We were in the middle of crossing Dean channel and were as far away from any shore as we could be. As we approached the far shore, the reason for this unusual behaviour became clear. Rob’s prophecy had come true. The diarrhea was explosive, and Reggie’s anxiety turned to shame.
I spent the next 4 hours cleaning Reggie, the boat and the items that affectionately came to be known as the “shit upons”, all while batting the relentless horseflies that swarm Eucott Bay. It was hardly the relaxing, incident free, spa retreat I had imagined for us.
To add insult to injury, the springs were way too hot to soak in - when I stepped my leg in I immediately recoiled back. “Ooooo, HAHHHHT!” I yelled, as a reflex. Not in the mood to be mutilated by 2nd degree burns, I decided to capitalize on the heat of the natural pool to warm up my military ration pouch - having a hot, sodium-filled “Chicken a la King” dinner would have to be my consolation prize. I threw in a pack of stomach settling pre-cooked rice, for Reggie, too.
All was right with the world the next morning, when I had a nice restorative soak in the hot springs after realizing that there was a little door that shut off the hot water supply to allow the pool to cool to a more reasonable temperature. Reggie, also, had a restful night without further incident.
I asked a few people in a boat anchored in the bay what the weather forecast was, as the next two days would see several miles of unlandable stretches, so I’d have to be mindful of the wind. I remembered the Nimpkish crew pointing out Elcho Harbour as a safe haven, and from there, the only spot suitable for landing before Ocean Falls was Frenchman’s Creek. The couple told me the wind today looked fair in the morning, picking up to about 15 knots by noon, and the same for the next day.
So, Reggie and I pushed off. It was fairly calm as we left Eucott Bay, but after an hour, the winds had really whipped up. I had decided to only row the 10 miles to Elcho Harbour today, and save the last 20 miles to Ocean falls for the following day. It was the first time on the trip that I had a true brisk tailwind, so I threw up the sail to celebrate. We made it to Elcho Harbour in record time, sailing up to a speed of 5 knots, and Reggie seemed much more relaxed than he had in recent memory.
It was a full moon, and at Elcho Harbour there was a beautiful natural rocky ramp that immediately dropped to very deep water, allowing me to float the boat overnight, making the process of packing up and going much more pleasant. Since I didn’t have a boat dolly with me, every morning I would often have to undertake the excruciating process of carrying my boat and gear to the water’s edge, which could be several hundred feet away, depending on the tide. The full moon would exacerbate the highs and lows.
On this part of the coast, the current flooded north, which meant that in order to go with the flow of the current, you had to leave at low tide, and end at high tide. The boat was over a hundred pounds, so I often channeled my inner Egyptian pyramid builder and used logs I found on the beach to roll the boat to the water - always a time consuming endeavour. Keeping that in mind, it was a complete gift to be able to just push off and go at Elcho.
Low tide was at 6 a.m., so I woke up at 5:30 to get packing. But, that morning, Reggie made himself scarce. I was ready to go almost immediately, but Reggie was nowhere to be found. I sensed his eyes staring at me from somewhere in the woods. I decided not to force him to do anything this morning. I tried two new tactics: patience, and complete silence. After 20 minutes, nearing 6a.m., I was starting to consider trying another method. But at 5:57a.m. as though he knew of the looming deadline, Reggie pushed his muzzle under my hands. He allowed me to carry him down into the boat and we quietly set off.
The water was calm at first, but the wind started picking up uncharacteristically early. At first, it was a tailwind, so I was able to sail, but suddenly the wind shifted 180 degrees and we were battling 20 knot headwinds. The wind shifted occasionally to beam seas, which are the worst case scenario for an unlandable shoreline, since no direction is better than the other. I was white knuckled, in the middle of a completely unlandable section, but I knew that Frenchman’s Creek, and respite from the wind, was only a couple of miles away. We pushed on…it was all we could do.
Frazzled but relieved, we dipped into Frenchman’s Creek, which was nothing but said creek, a boulder and a small sandy patch no larger than the boat itself, which I felt would disappear with the rising tide. Still, I was relieved to pull into the mouth of the creek and float. Something in the air felt ominous, but I was preparing to throw the anchor anyway, so that I could keep the boat floating while we waited out the winds.
From a quick scan of the landing area, the coast seemed clear. As I stepped out of the boat, Reggie’s ears perked up, his body stiffened, and he investigated the air with his nose. He began to growl, his eyes fixed on the boulder. From his hatch, he slammed his front paws onto the deck of the boat and barked with a seldom used ferocity, but in a tone I knew all too well.
From behind the boulder, a grizzly bear emerged and immediately walked towards us, from about 25 meters away. It then stood up on its hind legs, towering above us as it, too, sniffed the air. Reggie frothed at the mouth and leapt from the boat charging towards the bear as I yelled “GIIIIIIIIT!” The bear hesitated for a moment, but as Reggie charged, he turned and ran.
The water slowed Reggie down, so I was able to grab him, and put him in the boat. We left Frenchman’s Creek that moment, having suddenly convinced myself that the winds weren’t that bad. It seemed safer to face the winds and hug the cliffs for momentary reprieve rather than to have a rematch with a grizzly having second thoughts.
Reggie, my hero! He had risen to the occasion, and performed flawlessly and without hesitation, as though it was his destiny to do so. After a few more frantic hours out in the wind and the waves, we rounded Barba point into Cousin’s Inlet. Our change in course turned our beam wind into a tailwind and following seas. Up went the sail and I fed Reggie treats and ate fresh green beans and cherries, given to me by Dave in Bella Coola. We sailed all the way to Ocean Falls. It was a moment of pure bliss, drenched in adventure.
Our time in Ocean Falls was unforgettable and pure magic - a tale to be told at a later time, From there we pushed on to Bella Bella, and onto Dryad Lightstation to stay with a lightkeeper I had worked with years before. Our next port of call would be Ivory Island Lightstation, where I had had some charts and treats sent ahead of time.
In Prince Rupert, I had arranged packages to be delivered to various lightstations along our route, as I had been working as a relief lightkeeper for many years at this point, and had gotten to know many of the full timers and their stations. The plan was to mail charts back to a friend who lent me her precious collection, and replenish them with the charts I needed for the route ahead. This helped save on space and weight in the boat.
The lightkeeper I had originally made the arrangements with at Ivory Island was currently on vacation. The position had been filled by a relief keeper, whom I was not familiar with. I advised the lightkeeper at Dryad to let the keeper at Ivory know that I would arrive that day.
Ivory Island is only 15 miles away from Dryad Point, so after a fairly casual day of rowing, I called into Ivory Island Lightstation on my handheld radio in the early evening.
“Ivory Island Lightstation, Ivory Island Lightstation, Ivory Island Lighstation, this is Wild Rover on 82 alpha, over” I said, summoning my best professional radio etiquette.
“Wild Rover, Wild Rover, Wild Rover, this is Ivory Island Lightstation, over”
“Hello! As Dryad mentioned, I’ll be coming to the station this evening. I’ll be setting up camp on the east side of Ivory, and then I’ll come up to the station. I will be about 45 minutes, over”
“Wild Rover, copy that, will see you soon”
“Great! Wild Rover Out.”
I had worked at Ivory before, and knew of a great camping spot on the east side of the island, where I could confidently float the boat, knowing that it was in protected waters. There is a current that runs between Ivory island and the east shore, and so I planned to leave early in the morning to go with the flow, rather than against it. I quickly set up camp, grabbed my dry bag backpack and radio, and Reggie and I set off for the Lighthouse.
The trail leading to the station was precarious - it used to be a boardwalk but had fallen into disrepair. The planks were weak and acted as leg breaking booby traps, so the going was slow.
When I arrived at the station, something was off. The lighthouse keeper was pacing back and forth, with a radio in his hand, looking flustered while the assistant keeper looked on. As I announced my presence, he pivoted towards me and barked “There you are! Where have you been!? I’ve called the Coastguard and filed an overdue persons report!”
The smile from my face diminished to a nervous smirk, as I looked over at the assistant keeper and asked “Is he joking?” I said, hoping that this guy was seeking an academy award nomination for his performance. “He doesn’t joke….ever”, they said with a fearful look.
We all agreed that now would be a good time to call the Prince Rupert Coastguard Base and have them call off the search.
While the principal keeper went to the office to make the call, the assistant keeper saw their opportunity to leave, and said “It was nice to meet you, but I have to go”, disappearing into their own living quarters, locking the door behind them. This gave me the impression that this wasn’t the first outburst that this island had witnessed from this guy, and I totally understood, the assistant’s need to distance themselves. But now, I was left alone to deal with this lunatic.
He emerged from the office.
I looked at my watch. “I mean, I made it here pretty well exactly at the time I said I would.”
His eyes bulged out of his head and he shouted: “YOU’RE AN HOUR LATE! YOU SAID YOU’D BE HERE IN 4 TO 5 MINUTES!!!”
“I told you 45 minutes, four five, not 4 TO 5” I said.
“NO YOU DIDN’T….I KNOW WHAT I HEARD!” he spat.
This was hardly the friendly reception I had received from other Lightkeepers along the coast. Usually by this time, I’d be sipping tea and swapping tales, rather than receiving a scolding.
The irate keeper continued to condescend, accusing me of putting his job into jeopardy, and threatening to report me to my Coastguard superiors. “I’ll make sure you never get hired again!” he said. I assured him that we could chalk this up to a misunderstanding. I gently talked him down, pacifying the situation by taking the blame: “I should’ve said four five minutes, instead of forty five minutes, I see now how it could have been confused over the radio.” His fury stopped suddenly, like a passing squall. We moved into his house to go and pick up my package. I asked him how he was liking working as a relief keeper, as he was fairly new to the job.
Meekly, and out of nowhere, he asked “Can….can I have a hug?”. I recognized that this person was totally unstable, and against my will, hoping to dissipate the situation entirely, I gave in. It was….weird.
The hug reminded me of an image I once saw of an orphaned monkey that was used for an attachment theory experiment. The young monkey was given a choice between a wire monkey that provided milk, or a terry cloth monkey that provided comfort. When presented with both options, it clung to the terrycloth monkey every time. This was at once the saddest, most vulnerable, and creepiest hug I have ever received.
That night, Reggie and I hiked back to our camp. What I had supposed would be a quiet stop with pleasant company, was quite the opposite. I had the most uneasy, paranoid feeling I had on the entire trip - even in the wake of our encounter with the grizzly bear. I slept fitfully. The more I thought about the lightkeeper the more disturbed I became. Even though our interaction was brief, the vibes were off, and the behaviour of the assistant keeper suggested that this was a person to avoid at all costs.
The only relief I had was that I knew Reggie would be alert to warn me if the deranged keeper decided to show up. Reggie sensed my anxiety, and faithfully sat at the door of the tent, facing the trail that led from the Lighthouse to where I was camped.
Morning came at long last and the tide demanded we launch if we wanted to catch the current going the right way. Like I had done for the past 45 days, I packed up camp and loaded everything into the boat. Reggie watched, keeping a safe distance away from the water– and me. As I called him over to the boat, he retreated further into the woods. Today, I felt there was no time to patiently wait. The weird vibes and bad juju of Ivory made the need to leave seem more dire. We needed to go now to get through Lady Trutch Passage, onto Mathieson Channel, and Jackson Passage to get the tides timed right.
I tried all the usual tricks - luring him with treats, pretending to row away, walking in the opposite direction down the trail to have him follow me, and using a stern voice to call him over: “Git over here. RIGHT. NOW.”
None of it was a go, this time.
For an hour and a half, we danced this absurd duel of wills. Our window to catch the current was closing. I got angry - yelling and cursing. Reggie whimpered in the trees. Every time I approached him, he ran further into the woods. When that didn’t work, I sank into despair. What I had been advertising as a “team event”, had become a case of oppressor and the oppressed. I had forced Reggie into this adventure, dictated every move, ignored his boundaries - all in the name of my own goals.
I am a selfish monster.
I crumpled onto the rocks and began to bawl. I was ugly crying and apologizing “I’m SORRY REGGGGG! I am a bad dog mom.” Reggie watched me from the safety of the bushes above the rocks. And in that moment, I understood: I was no better than the insane lighthouse keeper whom we currently shared the island with. I was a captor, and Reggie the hostage, and I had given him no room for negotiation.
Dejectedly, I sat with my head in my hands, not knowing what to do, genuinely ashamed of what I had put this innocent soul through, in pursuit of my own goals. He had done nothing but support me, even on a journey he wouldn’t have chosen for himself. Suddenly, just as it happened a few days before, I felt a gentle nudge and a furry head laying in my lap. Reggie’s love language has always been about being a protector, very rarely showing affection. Yet here, showing an emotional intelligence well above my own, Reggie extended the olive branch. In this moment, I realized that not only did I expect Reggie to face his own fears and anxieties, but he had also been carrying mine. My cloth monkey.
I stroked his fur, and sobbed my apologies, vowing to be more in tune and respectful of his needs. We would take more breaks when he needed them, tides be damned. With reluctant resolve, Reggie made his way down to the boat.
Together, we pushed off, the current carrying us north. We continued on our journey for the next two weeks, finishing the trip in Prince Rupert, and deciding the row into Alaska could wait for another year. Though this was not the last of our conflicts, it was the beginning of our healing. In that vulnerable truce, I realized something important: sometimes the bravest act is surrender.
Oufff Gen you are more courageous then me,