26 June 2024 – My previous post ended with a tease: having visited the Port Moody Art Shuffle, I announced I was preparing a “shuffle” of my own.

Not soft-shoe! (Though thank you, Jo, for the quip.) Nope, my shuffle is all about water, even though it begins in the air.

A 40-minute Beechcraft flip…

positions me in Campbell River, on Vancouver Island, for a five-day exploration of the Discovery Islands Archipelago…

aboard a steel landing craft…

that had worked two decades in the Arctic, before being rescued from dryland storage in Fort McMurray and sent on her own 90-day delivery trip up a chain of rivers into the Beaufort Sea, through the Bering Strait, around Alaska, and down the Inside Passage to Campbell River…

where she was enlarged and rebuilt for her new life as the cargo/passenger vessel she is today: 135′ long, 34′ wide, capable of carrying 200 tons of cargo plus 12 passengers in six compact but well-equipped staterooms.

This June 18-23, I was one of them.

Boating friends had told me about the MV Aurora Explorer, flagship of Marine Link Transportation (whose fleet also includes tugs and barges), and I jumped at the idea.

It brought back memories of travelling around Newfoundland’s remote communities aboard a passenger/supply vessel in the 1970s, and it reminded me how much I enjoy discovering the nitty-gritty behind the pretty-pretty — the hidden hard work that makes happy outcomes possible.

We passengers assemble at the terminal north of Campbell River, and see our projected route marked on a map on the wall.

We will weave among various of the islands that cluster between Campbell River and the mainland to the east, and also travel to the head of two long mainland inlets, Toba and Bute. We will learn first-hand the truth behind the claim on MLT‘s “working” website (distinct from its tours website). This company provides “full marine freight delivery service,” handling everything from “logging equipment and camp barge site relocations to small pallets of champagne flutes,” offering charter and helicopter options as well, in order to service “remote coastal needs.”

We will also learn the endless calculations and adjustments needed to handle — among other things — tides, currents, cargo rebalancing after each delivery, and the varying states of the access points on shore.

The Aurora sets out fully loaded…

carrying vehicles, tires, fuel and other supplies to deliver to (among others) logging camps, a road-building project, a luxury wilderness resort and an equally luxurious private get-away.

She also carries her own fuel tanker, forklifts and other equipment…

to ensure delivery can and will be made.

We passengers sleep comfortably, eat very well, and hang out up top, sometimes in deckchairs but just as often lined up at the railing, stunned by the scenery around us and by the careful choreography of each delivery.

We immediately appreciate the skills of the chef and the steward; we quickly learn to appreciate the rest of the crew — captain, mate, engineer, deckhand — and, especially, appreciate what all six of them embody. Most of them have BC coastal life in their DNA, along with experience working in remote locations (Alberta’s Oil Sands, for e.g., and an Arctic mining camp), and all have the ability to multi-task.

The captain is usually in the wheelhouse…

but we also see him run a forklift, when that’s what’s needed. Typically, though, it’s the mate, engineer and deckhand who jockey the deliveries. Each site has its requirements.

At one site, the engineer guides the mate as he prepares to off-load a vehicle…

at another, all three work to patch an unstable access road with boulders, so it can bear the weight of the van and trailer they need to bring on-board for delivery to a companion site…

and somewhere else, they deliver fuel from the on-board tanker to on-shore tanks, with one person positioning the nozzle, another controlling hose performance and the third about to wield the dipstick.

Even at a luxury wilderness resort, where everything is perfection — including the access road — there is risk. A combination of factors means there are only 20 minutes between the first safe moment to arrive and the last safe moment to depart. Exceed that window, and you wait for the next tide. The resort knows that if they want that vehicle to be loaded on board, it has to be right there, ready and waiting.

It is right there…

and it is securely in place on deck within the magic 20 minutes. Off we go.

But the Aurora is not only about work, here on the remote BC coast!

There is play time as well.

Always available: the endless beauty that surrounds us. Big vistas as we travel, here for e.g. high up Toba Inlet…

and more beauty when we tie up each night alongside some boom logs. We spend a night in Toba Inlet, where the setting sun throws dramatic mountain shadows onto the mountains opposite.

We have time ashore. One day ATVs carry us up the steep rough track to the top of Hall Point, Sonora Island, where the view pretty well ticks the checklist:

ripening salmonberries in the bushes; a tug and neat rectangular log boom in the water; and mountains beyond, rolling away to infinity. All that’s missing — and thank goodness — is a bear or two. We are happy to make do with bear scat along the track.

Then there are the days when the Aurora lowers her ramp…

not to deliver a bear-watching van or sets of huge tires or tanker-loads of fuel or even furniture for a rich man’s private residence. But, instead, to deliver… us.

Pebbles (above) at Amor Beach, Bute Inlet; sand and rocks at Brem Bay Beach, Toba Inlet…

and crunchy barnacles underfoot at Orchard Bay on Quadra Island…

with huge ribbons of kelp and tiny scurrying baby crabs to complete the scene.

The Aurora lingers at several dramatic waterfalls to allow us a good view. Here at her namesake, the Aurora Falls in Bute Inlet, we are first allowed on the cargo deck to feel the spray in our faces…

and then we are shooed back upstairs. The captain, you see, has a plan. He angles the landing ramp slightly in under the falls, so that Aurora (Falls) power-washes Aurora (Explorer).

Water soon cascades down that ramp to flood the entire deck and scour it clean.

We have the pleasure of life all around us: a pod of Orca whales south of Read Island (too low in the water for any successful photography from our respectful distance); eagles in the air and in the trees; more than a dozen curious seals supervising that 20-minute loading feat at the resort; and the disappearing bum of a bear, who obediently scampers when the captain sounds some warning blasts, to make the landing site safe for the crew.

Human life as well, aboard fishing boats and, my favourite…

in tugs hauling booms of logs, as they have done for so very long.

I even hang over the railing just before we leave our tie-up early one morning, fascinated by the neat angles of the logs, and the punch of that single yellow buoy.

What else? Oh yes, the message in the sand. What is a walk on a sandy beach if nobody writes a message in the sand?

While we walk along Brem Bay Beach, and the mate runs into the water for a swim, our deckhand proves that she pours as much cheerful energy into play as into her work with a forklift, dipstick or boulders to repair roads.

I name her and show her with her permission. So: may I introduce you to Paige Boroski? I can’t think of a better final image for this voyage than her message in the sand: the words “Aurora Explorer” plus a drawing of a boat plus the date.

Unfortunately, not even I can read it, photographed from this angle! And the tide has long since washed it away.

But who cares? This image, like the whole trip, is in my heart.