BCAA

afternoon naps in our bunks and chats in the galley doorway with Pat Stephton, the cook, while she keeps an eye on a simmering soup pot. Best seat in the house? The "bleachers" – a raised day bunk behind the wheel and navigation table providing 24-hour access to the ship's operations centre, an increasingly rare experience in today's security-conscious world. "We get lots of men up here who served in World War II convoys in the North Atlantic, as well as those who've always just wanted to work on boats," says Stevenson, as he points out a curious seal popping up to starboard. "They'll be out on the bridge wing letting us know 'It's good back here.' " By the time we tie up to a log boom on the first night, we've made deliveries to a logging camp and three fish farms on Sonora, the latter part of a local aquaculture market that today relies on a range of highly specialized vessels. One delivers smolts, another brings in barges, cranes and crew to manage the net changes and anchor-dropping, a third ferries salmon to market – while one odorous specialist circumspectly scoops up only the "morts," as dead fish are known in the industry. That night, with the Aurora securely tied to a boom in Okisollo Channel's Woods Bay, I sleep like a mort cradled in a cedar chest. Despite the ship's brochure warning of vibration and working vessel noise, I need an alarm clock, not earplugs, to awaken next morning. Day Two: Hot fresh-baked muffins, fruit and freshly brewed coffee surface on the galley shelf at 07:00. Meanwhile, Stephton hustles together sage-and-apple sausages, eggs, hash browns and toast for our "real" breakfast. As if on cue, a small black bear lumbers by on a nearby beach. No grizzlies will prowl the spring river grasses this trip, but porpoises race our bow and soaring eagles cry like kittens overhead. Sea lions laze in back eddies, waiting for schools of fish. Stuart Island is still a fishy place. But mom-and-pop fish camps like Brimacombe, with its simple cottages and big tyee that appealed to Hollywood's Roy Rogers and, later, Washington scions such as Robert and Ethel Kennedy, have given way to out-ofscale, strangely urban, megabuck corporate retreats owned by the likes of Dennis Washington and the Ritchie brothers. On neighbouring Sonora Island, the award-winning Sonora Resort bills itself as "where pure wilderness and perfect luxury meet." Soon we're pushing a steady six knots up the main event: 75-kilometre Bute Inlet. No luxe resorts here, along what is widely viewed as one of the grandest fjords in the world. It is a wet, rich, green, wild place fed by the Coast Mountains' vast Homathko Icefield, where 2,000-metre-high cliffs plunge 650 metres to the sea, where we throw our heads back to gaze at unending waterfalls and nights skies suddenly crowded with stars. Yet pleasure boats typically give Bute a pass. There are few safe anchorages and the notoriously chilling outflow wind can howl down the inlet at 100 knots an hour. But of the scattering of tenacious souls who live and work on this stretch of coast, with addresses such as Echo Bay, Blind Channel and "Head of Bute Inlet," one has ordered the last delivery of our trip. Near the rich Homathko River delta, a lone prospector waits for fuel – convinced he, too, is sitting on the mother lode. By 21:55, we are secured to the Bear Bay booming ground for the night. Day Three and we're back in the Discovery Islands, where ferry-served Quadra – a bedroom community for Vancouver Island Continued on page 44 WESTWORLD p32-35,44-45_Aurora_DriveSmart.indd 35 >> S P R I N G 2 0 1 2 35 1/27/12 8:34:15 AM

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