Chemainus to Thetis Island July 7th 2008

We left Chemainus and took a very short one hour ride over to Thetis Island. Telegraph Harbor on Thetis has two marinas and we wanted to explore Thetis. So off we went. We ended up after looking around, staying at the Thetis Marina. The docks are long side ties, so we had power, no water. Water is a premium on the islands and very few docks have water and only if you are refilling water tanks, no wash down of your boat is allowed. Thetis is a small island and has about three hundred people. We walked up to the pub and paid our mooring fees and had lunch. The waitress, combination harbor person was named Mary. She lives on the island full time and is a writer and has a book coming out she has edited called Songs of the Whales. It is about all the local people and other locals sharing stories. It is done in a story telling fashion. After lunch it was time to go exploring. There is a cut in the middle of the island, that at high tide you supposedly can take your boat through to the other side of the island and into Clam Bay. Well we decided to test that with the dinghy instead of the boat since no way did it look passable, barley passable for a dinghy. We started out ok and by the time we got to the middle, rowing the dinghy with the outboard motor up, it started scrapping bottom. It was a nice warm day and the water, shallow as it was, was warm. So we stepped out of the dinghy and dragged her through the shallow part about 10 yards to where it was deep enough to get back in and continue. The water was very shallow. A woman 5 yards next to us in a kayak was scrapping the bottom and pushing off with her oars. It was an adventure as we passed a very small sailboat, with a mom a dad and two kids. The mom and dad got out of the sail boat to give her less draft and walk her forward, while the kids remained inside. Once thorough to the other side we started the engine and explored Clam Bay. Clam Bay is an Indian Reservation and there really are lots of clams and oysters. Unfortunately the area is posted no harvesting at this time. By the time we finished exploring, the tide had begun to come in and there was enough water to use the outboard all the way through. The tide differences here are large. They can range from an average of 10 to 14 feet. It makes planning travel and anchoring a little more challenging, not impossible, you just know when you arrived either high or low tide and account for that. When we returned to the boat and I had a couple more days left on my fishing license, we decided to see if we could catch crab from off the back of the boat. We used our folding, expandable crab pot, and low and behold, we caught crab. They were Red Rock Crab, great flavor just a little tougher shells. We caught three one female and two males. You cannot keep the females, and males must be 5 ¾ inches across, so she went free and the two males were dinner. We dropped the crab pot back in during dinner and we caught two more. We decided we had had enough crab in the last two nights and these lucky fellows were set free.