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musings of mark since 2001

   Millions of board feet of lumber is my guess as to how many logs were boomed up in our little bay overnight as the weather at the mouth of the South Fraser was to rough for them to attempt. It was sunny and just a slight breeze here with kayakers rounding Dorman Point, apparently things change when the mouth of a large river meets the sea and it can get treacherous for even the most seasoned captain. The boom is held together with fat chain around the outside and cables stringing the inside together, but the tug boat captain said it was more like a shoestring when the big waves come.
   He also talked about Tugboat Willy, the Orca that likes to hang around the tugboats when they are under a full load, but only those with twin screws. The Orca dolphin will swim for hours along side, and at times entertain himself with the twin propellers of the boat which seem to fascinate him. There’s about four barges a day going past Bowen on one side or the other, lots of wood with fish underneath and things for Willy to play around and with only 8 tugboat people aware of him he’s been a pretty well kept secret. Willy likes to be petted by the tugboat captains, and hanging around them at least keeps him from the dangerous high speed traffic. I don’t know if he belongs to a pod and just visits, they don’t see him all the time and it kind of explains maybe the odd sighting of a single Orca of the eastern side of the island.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 20th, 2003 at 7:44 am and is filed under Bowen Bytes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.