Bella Coolio: Day 4 Northern Sea Wolf

Distance traveled: 277 km

Cumulative distance: 1,176 km

Top speed: 76 kph

Moving average: 17 kph

What we counted today: whales. 4 humpbacks, 3 orcas (and 1 porpoise)

I was awake early and my watch looked like 5:20 am so I thought I could just laze about for ten minutes for the alarm to ring. 5:20 comes and goes so I check my phone and it is 4:20! I hear it pouring rain outside.

I am laying there waiting to fall back asleep when in the dark Nan says “would you like a coffee?” aaaaand, we’re up. Fortunately, we were pretty organized the night before, making sure our paniers were packed and our clothes for the day laid out. But because of the rain, I have to first deliver the paniers then retrieve the rain suits out of the top case. I was just glad that we had the rain today and not yesterday on The Hill.

We pack up and ride the 4 km to the ferry terminal to get in line. It’s 6:30 am and they are already loading vehicles some of which are being backed onto the car deck. However, motorcycles are last on, which is unusual. Generally, they squeeze the bikes on first but on this ship it is FILO so bikes are at the back of the ship but off first. By the time we are boarding about 7:15, the rain has largely let up. Riding down the ramp to the motorcycle deck, it is clearly low tide as I think we are on The Hill again and that ramp doesn’t look like it has traction so I just proceed on faith. The deck hand is giving me directions as we ride on board and he is signaling me to go wide and do a tight U-turn then back into a spot in front of a van. “Easy for you to say”, I shout to him.

While we are on board, we meet four guys who are riding adventure bikes. Three are wearing Chilliwack Search and Rescue jackets and I ask them if they are working. No, they are just out goofing off. They rode the “back way” to Bella Coola, whatever that means but I presume they meant forestry roads. They tell us that The Hill closed about 4:30 pm yesterday due to the fire and that they were the last ones through, so we missed it by a couple of hours. Now we know why the young gal that checked us into the hotel had such anxiety. She probably was due to go on a date with a guy from Williams Lake. And we had a close call with a hard decision; turning around or waiting till the road opened to catch another ferry. Next sailing is Wednesday but that ignores the fire question.

We have the good luck to plant ourselves on the left side of the seating area as the captain regularly updates us on what to see off the port side. I am sure there are other things to see but so far, everything is on our side: lighthouses, old communities, First Nations villages, whales… On the starboard side, you get to see all that open ocean!

I meet up with the Purser who's name is Paul and he tells me a little about life on the Northern Sea Wolf. All the staff are on board for 14 days (and off 14 days). There are crew quarters aboard for 15 people however, the summer crew compliment is 16 so one person each night has to sleep in a motel. The policy is that the most junior member of the crew goes to a motel but apparently, that generates a fair amount of whining so Paul, with 33 years of service, volunteered this summer. Paul is also the supervisor for all the non-bridge crew. There is a strict no alcohol policy including off duty. Coming to work with boozy breath from a night of drinking is enough to get a person terminated. "You might have heard we crashed a ferry a few years ago" Paul remarks. Yup, that story was infamous. Meals are prepared for staff during the sailing and once the ship reaches port and docks for the night, staff have their meal. It's meat loaf for this night, which is o.k. but he tells me they had prime rib a few nights ago. I ask about the lifeboats on board because they look like they would hold about 8 people each. "Is that just enough for the crew and the passengers get the life jackets?", I ask. They are actually rescue boats and there are two huge 100 person inflatable rafts in canisters which are released and inflated in an emergency. The rescue boats are used to pull the inflatable rafts away from the ship. In 2019, the Northern Sea Wolf was first on the scene of a plane crash and dispatched crew and two doctors who were passengers. The rescue boats was sent over to uninhabited Addenbroke Island and had to hike 1 1/2 kilometres to the crash scene to provide triage. Because of this incident, the Northern Sea Wolf is slated to get more robust rescue equipment.

Crew seem to be assigned to different and unrelated tasks while on duty. I saw the second officer and a member of the galley crew directing traffic when we departed. On a brief bridge tour, I talked to the lookout officer, who's job it is to watch for whales, dolphins, small craft, logs other ships and she has to log everything she sees. There is a plaque on the wall for the vessel that spots the most cetacean life in a season and she hopes to have the Northern Sea Wolf on the plaque for '23. I tell her that I had originally planned this trip in 2018, the year the Northern Sea Wolf was supposed to come into service. A young friend of ours, who is a BC Ferries captain, had told us about the plan to acquire a ferry to take on the route and we made a reservation. However, before our trip was to take place, the trip was cancelled by BC Ferries because the ship wasn't ready and we ended up repeating the Bella Coola - Prince Rupert voyage. The lookout officer then told me that the reason the ship wasn't ready was because it hit a log and needed "retrofitting".

I'm just going to give a shout out to BC Ferries here. BC Ferries is an oft-maligned organization here and it is not entirely fair. Staffing issues affect them like any business and maybe more so because on a long route like the one we are taking, staff make a two week commitment at a time. But if you are every looking for a great "driving" holiday that doesn't require you to actually drive for the most spectacular part of the trip, it is hard to beat. On this day, we didn't have the good fortune with the weather to sit outside all day but we did have that experience on our first trip to Prince Rupert and it is a spectacular way to spend a day. The service on the ferry is very good. Staff are friendly, accommodating, professional and hard working. The food is pretty good, too, all considering. It is hard to imagine these routes paying for themselves so I encourage you, dear reader, to plan a trip up the coast, have a holiday and talk about it.