Category Archives: Tours

Listening entities . . .

So we have had a few “warm up” tours close to home. I took the staff of the Campbell River Museum out to MItlenatch Island for the day for fun and Steve and Frieda and Sam ran our first local tour of the season up into Bute Inlet. And of course our first guest comments start to arrive.

But tomorrow, June 3, the season starts in earnest. I leave home with the ship to pick up guests in Campbell River and with good luck and providence, the COLUMBIA III should not be home again until mid-October.

I expend a lot of energy attempting to maintain a safe, fun, handsome ship and business. And as all Mariners know, and all those who stay harbour-side and watch the ship depart, there are many mixed emotions; pride, hope, fatigue, joy and quiet prayers to any entity that might choose to listen.

“Safe, fun, viable”.

Summer 2019

Ok, ok. This is going to be embarrassingly quick and dirty. My main workload is maintaining the ship and shepherding her through the byzantine worlds of Transport Canada regulations, First Nations negotiations, provincial Parks permits and training my staff.

So when the touring season begins and I get to putter around on a lovely classic wooden vessel, meeting wonderful guests, eating fabulous food and seeing amazing wildlife, I simply relax and enjoy myself . . .

… and I forget to take photos or write my blog . . . . I can relax, … sometimes . . . Can’t I ???

There are lots of 2019 photos from our summer in the website photo gallery, and I don’t want to repeat them here. So the following photos are just to prove that we do have guests, many whom return, and we see cool things and have fun.

What more could a guy ask for??? Perhaps a few months without a blog?

Here is a shot gun smattering of summer photos. Standby for the really, really exciting next blog loaded with seriously boring ship’s maintenance details.

Super Ace guide, Sam Lam . . .

a SPIRIT BEAR!!!!

stupid blogger/skipper/owner/maintenance flunky/chief dishwasher/tardy email responder etc, etc.;;; Mothership adventure 2019, British Columbia, Canada, Isobel Springett

;;; Mothership adventure 2019, British Columbia, Canada, Isobel Springett

;;; Waterfalls in GBR., British Columbia, Canada, Isobel Springett

;;; Mothership adventure 2019, British Columbia, Canada, Isobel Springett

Stretch Sam!!

Usually super Ace guide, Robin Humphreys, caught at a bad moment . . . I went back into the records and made an appropriate pay-roll deduction.

Certainly, wildlife viewing is a wonderful part of our summer and here is a classic example. Really, how many ecotourisms operators can brag about having a Cowbird join the ship of a day. The little hitchhiker even flew into the wheel house . . .

and finally fell asleep on my binnacle as we chugged along . . .

Dolphins!!!

Bute Inlet!!

Grizzlies and the COLUMBIA III

These are spring time shots of 2 grizzlies . . . They haven’t fattened up yet, that’s later in the fall.

Now that’s a big red cedar.

Sam’s dad giving some professional advice.

Another ace guide, (all our guides are pretty darn swell), Luke Roman.

;;; Mothership adventure 2019, British Columbia, Canada, Isobel Springett

;;; Kermode Bear (Ursus americanus kermodei), British Columbia, Canada, Isobel Springett

And all of a sudden the season was over and it was back to work for me. Here Tosh Harvey helped me with the end of season laundry . . .

and carrying everything BACK up to my house for dry winter storage.

All kayaking gear washed, rinsed and stored away.

The kayaks washed and hoisted into the boat shed rafters to get them out of the way for the winter.

And now, after about 40 days of straight work with the last tours and the run home and the end of season laundry and cleaning . . . now I can take the boat back to Campbell River for a special winter maintenance project . . . Stay tuned.

Summer 2014

Oh my gosh!! I don’t think skippers should write blogs . . . I get so far behind and really cool things happen and I forget to grab my camera and capture the blog-moments that I “should”. Here is a random summer sampler. Steve took many of these photos. He gave me his stash of shots after I had already posted many on our site so here are some more!

Luke. Lead guide, lead skipper after me, lead shipwright, awesome photographer dude and pretty darn great as a son-in-law too.

Kayak guide and life time (at least her life time) friend and neighbour, Robin Humphreys.

White-sided dolphins follow the COLUMBIA III

Oh hey! Now this is exciting! A new tender for the Columbia III. Just a little bigger than the old one and kinda shiny on the arrival date. It took almost 6 months to custom make and we pressed it into service on the “fly” in mid June.

Tavish on a photo shoot of the COLUMBIA III with Fern and I yelling, “TAVISH HANG ON YOU FOOL!”

Ah, those perfect, still, foggy Broughton mornings before the sun burns off the mists and the blue sky is revealed.

Ace guide/paramedic, Luke Roman. Always the same great smile . . . he even tolerates me.

Here is a guest, a firefighter from BC with a . . . well . . . a weird hat!

OK, Ok, it can rain SOMETIMES.

The group leaves the mothership for another day at “sea”.

Why does everyone seem so relaxed! The skipper is headed for the rocks!

Do you really need a telephoto lens for a rock that close?

Lots of steep granite in BC.

Nice t-shirt.

We so see sunsets in the Great Bear Rainforest.

. . . and waterfalls . . . Here is Phil from Seattle. This summer his private group chartered the COLUMBIA III for the second time. I think we will see them again.

. . . and Phil is an artist. From the guest logbook, this is Fern’s fiddle on the salon sofa.

and more water falls . . .

These are guests returning from bear viewing in the fall Great Bear.

and a few of Steve’s shots:

Another crew shot. Christina Purcell filled in so Fern could have some much deserved time off the boat.

The skipper hard at work as usual. It’s a tough job being so busy . . . .

Boomer Jerritt came again this year. Here are a few shots:

Crew shot: Erin Rowsell loves to cook and take pictures, so she asked to be on Boomer’s tour.

Cameras and music!

Don’t piss off the Skipper!!

Here is our son, Tavish and a group Ian McAllister of Pacific Wild brought together. We try to donate the use of the COLUMBIA III to Ian and Karen each year to help support their great conservation work on the BC coast.

Mark Hobson came with us again this year and the weather certainly cooperated!

The Broughton Archipelago was full of orca this summer. It was marvelous to see them all!

Here is a cool sequence. Steve caught these orcas that decided they wanted to “check us out” Here one is approaching us . . .

and diving under the COLUMBIA III !!!

and you can just see the white eye-patch below the handrail . . .

and out the other side of the boat . . .

and breaking the surface on the other side. With another orca clearly visible under water!

And another sequence of shots: A few humpback whales are working together to get dinner. One whale circles a school of small fish whilst emitting a stream of bubbles . . . This is called “bubble netting”

and then the other whales charge the concentrated fish school with their mouths open.

and load up on dinner. This can happen over and over with lots of great photo opportunities and just plain awesome to watch . . . to heck with the cameras.