A quick Wiki search yielded some fascinating info about Barkley Sound and Frances Barkley. Barkley Sound/Alberni Inlet is 356 meters (1175 feet) deep and is about 40km (25 miles) long. In 1787, Captain Charles William Barkley of the Imperial Eagle, explored the sound and named it after himself. Barkley traveled with his 17-year-old bride, Frances Barkley, the first European woman to visit British Columbia. Frances was also the first woman to sail around the world without deception. Only two women are known to have sailed around the world before Frances: Jeanne Baré, disguised as a man, and Rose de Freycinet, wife of Louis de Freycinet, as a stowaway.
Frances Barkley, the boat, was built in Norway in 1958 and used to operate as a ferry in Stavanger (which we visited in our sailboat Black Sheep II in 2011) as the M.S. Hidle. For the technically minded, her specs are an overall length of 128 feet, a beam of 24 feet and a draft of 9.5 feet. She is powered by a 400 HP 8 cylinder Bergen diesel and gets 11 knots burning 18 gallons of diesel an hour. She can carry up to 200 passengers and 100 tons of cargo.
The day dawned bright, warm and glorious and we arrived at the dock expecting a lovely, leisurely cruise. That was until we saw the fifty or so ten year olds, all with overnight gear, waiting to board with us. It's a small ship and they overran it with a noise level that had to be experienced to be believed. Luckily, we left them all at Bamfield as they were going to be visiting overnight at a Marine Research Centre located there.
We've spent a lot of time on boats, but, this trip was more than just another day cruise. MV Frances Barkley is a working boat and a vital lifeline for isolated homes and camps that line the shores of Barkley Sound. It delivers mail, groceries and freight to these communities and on each trip you'll never know exactly where you will be stopping. On our trip we made five stops delivering mail to Kildonan, stopped at Green Cove to drop a couple of people and a dog off, delivered what looked like an entire summer's worth of groceries to a cottage, delivered a new fridge to another cottage and a load of a lumber and a golf cart to Bamfield. Later in the summer, stops may also be made to drop off kayakers on the Broken Group of Islands near Ucluelet.
Here, we are docking at Kildonan BC to do the thrice weekly mail drop.
I don't envy this woman having to unpack all these groceries after lugging them up the ramp...
Where the water was too shallow to get in close, freight recipients had to come to us. These people were probably happy to receive their new fridge even though it was quite an effort to get it.
Another unique sight we saw was logging by helicopter. Can't think how this can possibly be cost-effective, but, it must be worthwhile as the helicopter kept going back and back and forth continuously picking up and dropping a log at a time into the boom.
We spent a couple of hours at Bamfield, a most delightful community, before making the return trip to Port Alberni. Bamfield has had some problems in recent years with a rogue developer letting buildings deterioriate, like the abandoned Bamfield Inn. What a waste of a beautiful building. Surely someone could make a go of it in such a beautiful location.
There were many traditional maritime-style homes in Bamfield.
Bamfield also has a thriving Marine Research facility and a very impressive, newly refurbished Coast Guard Station.
Bamfield also had fabulous ice cream which we felt entitled to after an hour's walk to Brady's Beach. A small, sandy, beach, a long view and tide pools to explore made for a perfect little beach and we had it all to ourselves.
Best of all, Brady's Beach tidepools had many starfish to marvel at!
Even a starfish 'huddle'....
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