Tod Inlet Experience

 

I have been cruising the gulf Islands for most of the summer on a quest to complete the filming of a TV pilot for 2010 (it’s a tough life, but somebody has to do it!) and as a result have been amazed about how much I DON’T know about the area. I have been cruising here for 15 years and it seems that every time I come out something new amazes me again.

 

I had booked a couple of days at the Brentwood Bay Lodge and Spa as I was doing some writing and needed a place to hole up. I have never been here before, normally choosing to anchor somewhere close by, but I have to say I have missed out!

 

The place is almost new, clean in the extreme (including the toilets and showers) and there is a pool with poolside bar (no children). There is a good restaurant (so I am told) and an excellent pub and patio where we had a great dinner with a view. I can highly recommend it. And the docks are in the process of being replaced completely.

 

I had my Judy in from the UK, so I got the dinghy down the next day to explore Tod Inlet and wasn’t looking to see much, it being so close to civilization and all, but check this out…….

 

A young bald eagle launches himself off a rock barely 20 feet from us.

 

We were just trying to get a shot of the inlet with a couple of kayakers in the foreground when we noticed that they were staring intently into the trees nearby.

 

“A bear”, I whispered and crept closer, turning off the outboard.

 

“No, it’s an eagle, look!” whispered Judy. It was so quiet it was as if we were in a cathedral. Our boat drifted closer still, and we noticed a young teenage bald eagle sitting atop a rock, stock still and well camouflaged, looking at something below with one steely eye.

 

Almost impossible to see for the camouflage, but look right below the eagle under the rock he is sitting on….

 

We held our breath and the family of otters went about their business as if they didn’t have a care in the world. Maybe they were looking at the eagle and saying “bring it on baby!!”

 

Eventually the eagle gave up and with a mighty heave of his wings, took off for the other side and some peace and quiet. We started our engine and motored gently on.

We had heard that there was a “Lion’s Mane” jelly fish up here, and that it was a good 3 feet across. I didn’t believe it. But blow me down, there he was, about a foot below the water and apparently poisonous with massively long tentacles. Taking a picture wouldn’t have meant much, but there were other types there too.

 

This Aurelia or “Moon Jelly” was about a foot across, but there were millions of smaller ones.

 

The “Moon Jellies” were everywhere, a result of global warming as they prefer warmer waters. Mind you, we put everything down to “global warming”. This summer has been wonderful, so I say a big hooray (with tongue in cheek of course). We motored on.

 

And while I am on the subject of wildlife, have you been having trouble with over heating of your main engine or genset? If you have a relatively small engine and have suddenly experienced this, I have no doubt you have checked everything, including your raw water filter. Well, if you take the filter apart, you might just find it full of invisible jellyfish! It happened to me twice this year, never mind the weed I have been sucking up in the intakes. The jellyfish leave slime over the filter that is hard to get water through. Just a thought. Larger engines generally have a more powerful impeller and will push the little beasties through pretty well anything, so less of a problem for them. But I digress….

 

Soon we were looking at the back of Butchart Gardens, and the little cabin that serves as a nature information centre. An old chimney from years ago when the place was a cement quarry, sticks up out of the forest like a rusting Atlas missile. English Ivy climbs all over the banks and swallows line up to put a deposit on one of the many condos built especially for them on the old pilings that still stand in the water. Some of the old machinery is still in evidence on the shoreline to remind us of its past and to let us marvel at the change that came about when, and I use their website’s words here:  Mr. Butchart exhausted the limestone in the quarry near their house, his enterprising wife, Jennie, conceived an unprecedented plan for refurbishing the bleak pit. From farmland nearby she requisitioned tons of top soil, had it brought to Tod Inlet by horse and cart, and used it to line the floor of the abandoned quarry. Little by little, under Jennie Butchart's supervision, the abandoned quarry blossomed into the spectacular Sunken Garden. By 1908, reflecting their world travels, the Butcharts had created a Japanese Garden on the sea-side of their home. Later an Italian Garden was created on the site of their former tennis court, and a fine Rose Garden replaced a large kitchen vegetable patch in 1929. Mr. Butchart took much pride in his wife's remarkable work. A great hobbyist, he collected ornamental birds from all over the world. He kept ducks in the Star Pond, noisy peacocks on the front lawn, and a curmudgeon of a parrot in the main house. He enjoyed training pigeons at the site of the present Begonia Bower, and had many elaborate bird houses stationed throughout Jennie's beautiful gardens. (http://www.butchartgardens.com/the-gardens/our-history/our-history.html)

 

The gardens are pretty much invisible from the water, apart from the odd tantalizing glimpse, but the surroundings we were in are stunning enough in themselves. The inlet gets pretty busy at weekends when the gardens put on a firework show, and you can always access the gardens from the little bay to the north of the entrance into Tod Inlet, where there are a few buoys to tie up to and a dock to take your dinghy alongside and get in. A gate keeper will take your fee from there and you can visit one of the most amazing gardens in the world without enduring the line-ups and car parking at the main entrance.

 

Of course Brentwood Bay is the home of the Mill Bay Ferry, “The islands most beautiful shortcut”  and a route that is the oldest in BC at 85 year old, and is at the entrance into Finlayson Inlet too. This inlet is seldom visited by boaters as it is off the beaten track and doesn’t lead anywhere. At the head though is a community that (I am told) is right out of the 1950’s and has hardly changed. Sounds wonderful to me so no doubt that’s my next destination when I return later in the year.

 

Swallow condos await new occupants each year.