A very short distance in a northwesterly direction up Tribune Channel from Kwatsi Bay, is a special waterfall that drops straight down into the salt water from a smooth, broad granite face. The guidebooks refer to it as "Lacy Falls" and rumor has it the shore is so steep-to that you can run yer boat right up under the falls for a super-duper photo opportunity. Among others, the "Dreamspeaker" series of cruising guides features such photos prominently, and they are truly spectacular. Big, foamy water cascading down big flat rock, with little boat underneath soaking in the Wonder That Is Nature. Many people say they replicate this image with no adverse consequences.
Us? Not so much. Our motto is: Fox stays away from rox.
Consequently and accordingly, our photo ops are less...adventuresome-looking than those in professionally-published guides. 
And we're quite comfortable with that. 
Plus, there's that stuff that's in the way of a fully-perfect amateur photo op: the large fish farm right next to the falls, and the prawn pot that some commercial fisher dropped right in front of it. Commerce and resource extraction always trump tourism and recreation, dear readers.
Despite such a cynical attitude, I find the Broughton Archipelago is very cool. There is history all around here. There are many islands, big and small, all of them steep-sided and heavily forested,* several very nice anchorages, and some Secret Spots where you can go ashore and discover hyper-awesome old shell beaches (i.e., old First Nations middens) and maybe some old pits where longhouses used to be. The old-timers report at least 200 such sites in the Broughtons alone. Ahem: we haven't exactly...discovered much like that...yet...But, the air is cool, the trees are green, the clouds drop low, the coves are secluded, and very often in the channels among these islands, the wind and water are mirror-calm. As the guidebooks suggest, conditions like these make you contemplate the origins of life. 
(Or you might think of ghosts, giant killer fish with fangs, or fog monsters. Whatever.) Bonus: because we've been traveling in the early season (yes, June is early up here), nobody at the marinas is busy so they have time to spend with us and clue us in to what's what. We can actually talk to people about who they are and what they do, rather than just ask them to handle our lines for us and does their store have any vegetables for sale, which is all they hear from everybody during July and August. The locals up here are tough, and hip, and good to get to know - just don't show much of your citified ways, because they are quite irrelevant.
Long story hardly shorter, we had some business to do via either the Internet tubes or telephone, so we made our way from Wahkana to Echo Bay, where the guidebooks promised us o-so-much in the way of amenities. Alas.
One thing a cruiser has to know about travel in BC north of 50: Things may not always be consistently as reported. If a marina gets rave reviews in the guide books for good docks, a great laundry, fresh water, shore power, Internet access, a restaurant, a fully-stocked store...That may very well be the case. Alternatively it may very well be the case that the Internet cable has been cut, the restaurant has not yet gotten licensed due to increased government regulations, the fresh water is contaminated by giardia, the barge has not yet come to stock the store with groceries, the water pressure may be nonexistent, and the electricity may be down because the generators have caught on fire. We have experienced each and every one of these events in various places up here. Within the past week. It's nobody's fault; it's the vagaries of travel north of 50 and you'd best be flexible and prepared if you travel up here. Tip: don't cruise long term with any significant unfinished business or bills to pay. An onboard watermaker is also a very good idea, especially if you think you'll spend more than two weeks away from a marina with verifiable fresh water. We have ably weathered all these trials and tribulations of a shocking and devastating lack-o'-urban-amenities, poor us. But we have also discovered other glories, in a very suburban-recreational-boater kind of way.
Because we had some of that unfinished business, we sought Internet connection. We pirated found it in Echo Bay, 
when we tied up overnight at the Windsong Marina dock (to port as one enters Echo Bay, FYI) and Carol the Bead Lady met us. On the Windsong side of Echo Bay, there is no shore power (but there wasn't any across the way at Echo Bay Marina, either, then) - but there are pictographs (if you ask Carol nicely, she'll show them to you and tell you some history), 
artwork for sale (best product for miles around from several various local artists), some free Internet access that filled our needs...and Carol and her husband Jerry, themselves.
Jerry is the kind of tough guy with an equally tough wife who hunts and kills his own deer, eats the venison & tans the hide, fishes, harvests crab & shellfish, cuts his own timber, repairs his own boat, and basically has lived off the land most of his adult life with hard-won 19th-century skills. In short, just the kind of dude to give us a lesson in the quickest way to catch and kill a crab. Jerry couldn't stop laughing at our suburban awkwardness with All Things Rural, but it put him in a good enough mood to roll his eyes, give us 4 Dungeness crab from his trap (which we exchanged for some of GB's cherished Old Kentucky Cured Ham), and send us on our way with enough Crab Lore and the fastest kill-and-cook method,** in the hopes that we might prevail when the crabs rise up and attack us humans en masse.
Carol gave us the big picture of the area, and encouraged us to take the arduous 10-minute trek through the local school grounds over to Billy Proctor's place. According to Carol, this entire back of Echo Bay is a 6000 year old midden, and it must be true, as we saw clam shells in the soil far, far above high tide line. 
Billy Proctor has quite a spread, including docks, boardwalks, outbuildings, a marine ways, a dock, and a museum - all in excellent shape and obviously very well tended. We never saw Billy himself (he was busy with others) but we toured his museum and left a calling card before getting back to the Fox for the next leg of the trip. Good clean fun, man.
We briefly toured Viner Sound - but for our purposes and given the euphemistic forecast of moderate-to-strong easterly winds, which were already starting to assert themselves, we chose not to tuck into any of Viner's tiny coves. Instead, we went to O'Brien Bay way in the back of Simoom Sound and found a fine little spot, Rusty Cove, that another sailboat had just given up on, perhaps for lack of good anchoring. 
This was another North-of-50 spot with lots of rocks but a fair amount of mud, that demands careful and patient anchoring. Bruce got a good bite on the second try and we spent three very calm nights there, both of us sleeping longer and more soundly than is decent. When we were conscious, GB caught a copper snapper, but his attempt at crabbing yielded the Scourge of BC Crabbers: a very large, very aggressive, sunflower star. How scary are sunflower stars? Let's take another look at Rick Harbo's "Whelks and Whales" field guide:
"Sunflower Star - Pycnopodia helianthiodes...Arm radius to 18"...Habitat: intertidal to 1435'...Description: Broad disc with up to 24 rays,...Soft, flexible body, abundant surface spines, pincers and gills....Largest, softest, and having the most rays of northern Pacific species. Very fast-moving, up to 360' per hour. Elicits escape responses from northern abalone...and swimming responses from swimming scallops..., the California sea cucumber...and giant dendronotid...." FYI, 360 feet per hour equals one foot per 10 seconds. Time that, yourself, and you'll see just how fast these critters move. They are the cheetahs of sea stars, and they are voracious. They grow big and heavy up here north of 50 on all the food they nab, and if a crab senses a sunflower star in the vicinity the crab leaves town. If you were near a sunflower star, it'd elicit escape responses from you. Which means, that if you're pulling up a crab trap in BC, and it feels rather heavy, you might not have a mess o' crabs, but instead one of these bad boys:
Thus stymied, we had no choice but to depart our tranquil anchorage for another stab at Internet connectivity - this time, at fabulous Sullivan Bay at North Broughton Island. We arrived on June 15. In contrast, Pat Finnerty, current co-owner and ex-float plane pilot, started his work here in 1969, harvesting his own timber and milling it himself for the docks and float houses - much of the docks, even today, were hand-milled by Finnerty, so walk in reverence when you're here, you urban rube. 
The atmosphere - at least in this early season - is open, friendly and fun, and most amenities can be had here. Heck; I'm writing this, aren't I???? And at least one of the Sullivan Bay float homes has a helicopter pad on the roof.
Plus, if you're really nice to the harbormasters and the local fishermen who come in with their catch o' halibut, you just might get the word on where to fish hereabouts.
Here north of 50, we are meeting people who have made decent livings, doing what they want to do, since the '60s and '70s in what has essentially been a wilderness area. They're still doing it, and they're doing it well, though their circumstances are all changing. If you can, take a large chunk of time soon to come up here before the citified crowds do, and get to know these people. They have so much to offer, if both you and they have the time to share.
m
* ermm....except for the clearcuts...
** abjuring the perhaps more typical boiling-alive method, which takes forever; and involving a quick grasp of the crab's bottom parts, inverting said crab, threading of the thumbs ventrally between the crabs pinchy legs with the fingers threading through the legs dorsally, and a very sharp and rapid breaking of the dorsal carapace on a hard-edged object such as a mooring rail or cleat, immediately followed with dorsal carapace removal and quick disembowelment, until only two clean, meaty portions each containing half the total number of legs remain. All else is promptly consigned to the deep. Total time elapsed: 20 seconds or less. Yes, Meat Is Murder. Tasty, Tasty Murder.
