I am still having trouble uploading my whale videos, so please stay tuned.

We arrived in Echo Bay on Sunday and immediately set about sight-seeing. We’ve been hearing about this place for years and were very interested in understanding more about the transformation from previous proprietor, Pierre, to First Nation ownership.

First, we headed up the hill to visit Billy Proctor’s Museum, a famous guy with a long and colorful history. Read more about him online – interesting fellow. Along the way we walked the recently improved trail – looks great, with new placards, steps, and rope handrails. We arrived at Billy’s house and museum and were shortly joined by Billy himself! He is 90 this year and we’re told he still runs his own boat. We had a great chat with him, checked out his huge collection of assorted stuff, and took a lot of photos. Billy said this is the wettest spring he’s experienced.

Billy’s place:

We grilled pizzas after having some wine with Mike and Deb aboard Aris. They are very gracious hosts, always with some tidbits to share. I need to step up my game.

Yesterday morning, I tracked down the dock staff person who checked us in. Barry is just here for a couple of weeks until he is relieved. Very helpful and informative. I wanted to talk with him to collect information for the Waggoner editors, who asked us some specific questions regarding the status of Echo Bay. Barry invited me to walk with him to the dining hall/event center to see the upgrades and to take photos. The General Manager, Darren, soon joined us. They were both a wealth of information and it was so exciting to hear about how this beautiful spot will be improved over the coming years. Much of the work is planned to be finished in this next off-season, including a solar project with will provide 550KW of battery storage so they don’t have to rely on generators.

We weren’t sure about our next stop but we all decided it might be nearing time to leave the Broughtons behind and go in search of better weather. We all decided a return to Lagoon Cove might be a good plan.

As we departed Echo Bay, we heard someone on the radio (Ch. 16) say, “Yankees, go home. Yankees, go home.” We think it may have been the commercial prawners who are at it hard and heavy right now before their season shuts down. There were several small, private boats out in the prawner’s territory, and it probably pisses them off. This is just a guess on our part…

We also learned, from Darren, that the commercial prawners don’t necessarily stop on a specific day but rather when the percentage of females gets too high. With the volume they catch, they don’t have time to sort through and throw egg-laden females back, which is what we do. Makes sense.

On the way, we went the long way around in order to swing into Kwatsi Bay, a place with a reputation for great scenery with waterfalls. We dropped our anchors and explored by dinghy before continuing to Lagoon Cove.

Tiny Aris and ToG against backdrop of waterfalls:

Saw another humpback.

Here is Mike’s Relive video from Sullivan Bay to Echo Bay.