CATEGORY: SAILING
PHOTO: TOBA INLET WITH WATER FULL OF GLACIAL SILT

We sailed up Toba Inlet.  Ours was the only boat.  We felt that we had gone back to the beginning of time.  We were surrounded by steep mountains with timber “as thick as hairs on the back of a dog.”  The water was opaque.  It looked like turquoise ink mixed with liquid silver, a phenomenon I had never seen before.

 Bob said it was glacial silt.  We managed to find a place to anchor near a small but energetic water fall.  A mother and two tiny baby seals were playing in the aerated water right beside out boat.  Bob serenaded them on his harmonica.

The next morning was foggy.   We were awakened by a sea plane thundering low past our boat and landing down the inlet from us.  As we were eating breakfast in the cockpit, we heard a voice calling out “HELLO-O-O.”  We thought at first that it was the screech of a Pterodactyl, but it turned out to be a homo sapien—in fact two homo sapiens–wearing cork boots.  They came clambering carelessly down the slippery rocks through the trees.  We were surprised that they were dressed in human clothing and not covered with hair like Sasquatches.   After a brief moment of amazed silence, we decided it would not be a risk to our lives to help them aboard and offer them a cup of coffee and something to eat.  They eagerly accepted and wolfed down all the food we could provide.  I scrutinized their faces closely.  Maybe they were wolves—in sheep’s-wool clothing.  They told us they were “timber cruisers”—which means that they were walking over a certain area to estimate the board feet of lumber it contained.  It was a tough slog, because the “area” was mostly vertical.  They were young men and fairly new at their job.  They said they had been deposited by the plane we had seen earlier and asked if they could hitch a ride with us if we were going back down the inlet to where it was waiting for them.  It would save them a rough trek back.

By the time we got un-anchored and the sails up, the sky had cleared. Bob took them for a joy ride out to the middle of the inlet.  Neither of them had ever been on a sail boat before.   A wind was blowing up the channel, and tacking into it with the hull keeled to one side was as new to them as vertical timber cruising was to us.  Their knuckles from gripping the rim of the cockpit were whiter than when they were climbing down the rocks.  When we got to their plane, they thanked us profusely.  I am sure their thankfulness extended to being thankful they were still alive.