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Day 9, 8/10/01
Weather: Clear AM. Some high clouds in the mid afternoon. Clear PM.
Paddle: XXX to Cuttle islits off the Acous peninsula.
Alarm at 6 am. Joseph is up and sees a bear across the channel. It is a huge black bear, about 200 ft away, foraging along the shoreline on the other side of the channel. It is beautiful to watch. It knows we are here and sniffs the air in our direction and squints at us. Twice it makes to cross the channel but is turned back by Joseph's moderate yells.
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We pack and are in our boats by 7:30, but still have to drag them across some shallows. We stop by the herring shoal. The sharks are now swimming around off to the side. I see up to 12 at one time. Joseph said that the herring may be in to spawn and maybe the sharks know that.
We cross several large stretches of water today and pass over many large shoals of herring In some ways each shoal operates like a single organism. It eats brine shrimp and produces larger bio-mass in multiple processing units. Running across so many shoals of herring just paddling a straight line through the area gives me an appreciation for how abundant life in these waters is.
We land in the Bunsbies and get out for a break. After being in shore a short while we hear then see a large whale in the kelp beds which we just paddled through. It passes very close to another party of paddlers and we are all very jealous. Joseph said that he heard the whale several times but thought it was water in a rock.
We leave the Bunsbies, cross an inlet, and enter Battle bay where we stop in a large fresh water stream. We paddle into the stream and land on it's gravel shore. Here we all wash ourselves and I wash several items of clothing.
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From there we paddle to the head of the Acouse peninsula and the Cuttle islands. We pass a couple on their way over to the Bunsbies. Then we see a larger grouped camped at the top of a nice beach. We check out a couple beaches and choose a camp on one of the outer islands.
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Day 10, 8/11/01
Weather: Clear then fog and S wind by noon.
Paddle: Day paddle.
We see several bear on the Acouse peninsula. First there is an adult munching in the salal on a point. Further on we see another adult scrambling up a rock ramp - possibly startled from the sea shore by our passing. Later, we see the first adult napping on a log. When we make some noise a cub's head pops up from behind. I touch on the shore to get as close of a picture as I can. The mother looks at me, but does not look concerned.
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