All the boats were gone except the two disabled fishing boats and the Jofian. Then a third disabled boat came in! There's also a young guy with a kayak. He paddled his kayak all the way from Seattle!
The rain let up for a while this morning, and the sun almost came out. We paddled over to the waterfall, which is a magnificent raging torrent from all the rain. Then we paddled back to "town", pulled our Royaks out of the water, and went exploring.
There was a very large fish cannery here fifty or more years ago, but it's been abandoned for a long time. The buildings were sturdily built, and many are still in fairly good condition. Also, there's a lot of machinery that was left behind. We had explored the huge warehouse on our way north but didn't have time to check out the rest of the buildings. The whole place is overgrown with bushes and brambles, so we had a hard time finding a way to get up the hill to the houses. This morning, we went to the far end of the big warehouse. There was a room with an old tractor in it, and just beyond the tractor was a doorway. We went through the door and followed a path past an old building and up the hill. There was a three-storey building that might have been a hotel or housing for the workers. The floors and stairs were still solid, so we went all over, looking into all the rooms. There were about 75 bedrooms, several bathrooms, a lounge area, and even a laundry room with automatic washers and dryers, which indicates the place was in use at least as recently as the fifties.
Vandals have had a heyday here. Everything that could be smashed had been smashed. There's scarcely a whole pane of glass in the entire town, plumbing fixtures have been ripped out or broken, furniture wrecked, holes kicked in walls, etc.
We went into what had been the mess hall. There were long tables in the dining room and a big old wood stove in the kitchen. There was a big walk-in refrigerator that still had cartons of ancient eggs and a box of shriveled-up oranges.
Higher on the hill were five small houses. They too had been vandalized. We were able to go into most of them, but the floor had collapsed in the fifth.
We followed a path in back of the houses, past the electrical transformers, to another big building with machinery in it and what looked like holding tanks for the fish. We couldn't go any farther in that direction, so we walked back to the other end of the path. Found a wooden bridge across a torrential stream. I was afraid of it, but Roy went across and said it was safe, so I followed. It was good and solid. At the other end of the bridge was a well-built cement building that housed the turbines. The turbines are driven by the cascading water and are still turning after all these years! Roy was thrilled. He explained the whole operation to me.
Across the stream from the turbine house was a small house that apparently had been the residence of the person in charge of the turbines. Roy checked it out, too, but I wasn't about to cross the stream on those broken old boards. Besides, it was after one o'clock, and I was famished.
Returned to the boat and weighed anchor. Went over to the waterfall so Roy could take some pictures of the Jofian in front of the waterfall. Then we took off down Graham Reach, eating lunch as we went.
We felt bad about leaving all those people with their disabled boats, but there really wasn't much we could do for them. At best, we could have towed one boat a short distance, but we certainly couldn't have towed all three, and we couldn't have even towed one far enough to do him any good. They were better off staying at Butedale. The Coast Guard knew where they were, and I'm sure in due course boats would come along to tow them to Port Hardy or Prince Rupert.
We turned into Green Inlet, intending to anchor in Horsefly Cove, but it turned out to be much deeper than the charts indicated, so we crossed the inlet and anchored off a sandy beach in about 30 feet of water. Put out two anchors and 90 feet of chain. Very peaceful.
Roy cooked a delicious supper in the pressure cooker. The salmon turned out even better than in the microwave, so he cooked enough for sandwiches for tomorrow's lunch.
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