from   NARROW ESCAPES AND QUIET EXCURSIONS

 From Chapter 10 -- Running the Rapids on Radar
     We motor out.  As we come closer the fog expands.  White and light filled it closes around us.  The fog remains full of light but there is nowhere for our eyes to see.  No sight lines.  Nothing but the silence.  Only the radar to see with.  
     Unnerved we dither.  We've never run in fog.  Maybe we should try it.  On the other hand, why start now by running the Green Point Rapids blinded by fog.  Cordero is a narrow, island-strewn channel, bedeviled by treacherous currents in the last mile and a half before the rapids.  We hesitate.  I shove the engine into neutral.  Sitting quietly in the fog we can see each other clearly.  We can also see a circle of dense gray water a few feet out from the boat.  But nothing else.  We hesitate.  Debate.  This fog is too frightening.  Still, we want to make the slack.  Finally, having reached no reasoned conclusion we decide to go. 
     I shift into gear, inching forward, riveted to the radar. Till this moment the radar was an add-on.  Helpful for measuring distance, for calculating whether I needed to alter course to avoid a collision. Useful during lazy long runs to calculate just when we'll be snug somewhere and curled up with a warm cup of'.  This is different. None of that prepared me to understand what the radar means when it is the only visual information to work with.   
     In the time before we reach the eastern end of Erasmus Island I have to get so used to steering by these yellow points and patches of light on the black screen that I can avoid being heaved up on Erasmus Island by the big back eddy there.  I have to be able to avoid hitting the Edsall Islets.  To do that I must be able to 'see' the right moment to make the starboard turn into the rapids.  We are making about five and a half knots.  It is four nautical miles to the eastern edge of Erasmus Island; another one and a half miles to the turn into the rapids.  So, I have approximately forty minutes to learn this.  
     As the boat travels through the water the yellow patches and points of light on the radar screen move around.  Patches of light connect and disconnect.  Pinpoints of light could be other boats or land or rocks, but to notice the pinpoints at all requires exiting the world of sight and entering the world of reflected signals.  Mark is glued to the GPS, to the chart and to that narrow ring of visible water; steadily calm, stoic despite my terror, and fright-induced swearing and impatience. 
      He feeds latitudes and longitudes into the GPS to set up the waypoints.  Fully concentrated, I try the radar at two nautical miles, at one, at four, at one-half.  I ease back on the throttle.  Then stop. We are drifting south at almost two knots on the last of the ebb tide, drifting more or less towards the rapids.  I slip the “Liza Jane” back into gear.  Mark and I work over the chart with an eye on the radar, using the GPS for speed and distance    
     The “Liza Jane” is headed straight for a point of land just back of a nasty group of rocky Islets called the Edsall Islets.  The chart shows a simple black cross at the eastern edge of the islets.  Is that the dreaded black cross indicating that somewhere, invisible to me (and to the radar), there is a rock or a shelf which I can hit and tear out the hull and drown us in the eddying waters if I don't keep absolutely disciplined in order to make the turn into Chancellor Channel and thus into the rapids, all at exactly the right time.      
     A thick roll of terror grips in my mid-riff. Terror of the place, of the fog, over-whelmingly of the responsibility. I can't get out of this. It’s too late to turn the wheel over to Mark. I have to turn the wheel now before we hit the Edsalls. Squeezing down the fear I turn to starboard; into the still active whirl pools. They push and tug at the Liza Jane's old hull. I keep to the south west shore until I see kelp in the visible water to port of me. The kelp is bunched above the surface, presumably growing, thriving actually, on more rocks, hopefully deep beneath the surface. I steer along the line of kelp, close to it but not in it and thus avoid that black 'star' rock that is buried in the fog on the north east side of the rapids. The eddies brush the keel pushing it. I correct our course. And correct again and again; keeping just outside the line of kelp.
   "What if another boat is coming through, also hugging the south west side to avoid the rock." I grab the mike of the radio phone, ensure the radio is on channel 16, the Coast Guard Channel, that, hopefully, anyone else out in this fog will be listening to, "Security. Security. This is the Liza Jane. We are a thirty-two-foot full displacement hull wooden vessel. We are proceeding westward through the Green Point Rapids in heavy fog."
   After a time, out of the fog, comes a woman's voice, fractured by static, "...a sailboat proceeding east…currently at D'Arcy Point …proceeding east in heavy fog."
    Did I hear correctly? Where is D'Arcy Point? Mark grabs for the chart. Then the voice again, "I assume you heard us. ... will pick you up on radar... are in heavy fog." After a long moment we found them on the radar west of us. Not yet in the rapids.
All alone as we were in the fog, to hear, however faintly, however cracked by static, the disembodied voice of another woman, also smothered in fog trying to make it through was deeply touching. As if we were souls.   

From Chapter 17  -- Nepah Lagoon  
     Coming through Dunsany Passage we found the Columbia III anchored East of the North end of Dunsany Passage.  This vessel is the third in the line of Columbia Mission boats that began life serving coastal communities and isolated homes on the BC Coast between Quadra Island and Prince Rupert.  Columbia I & II used to bring medicine, a nurse, a doctor, human contact, and Christian services to isolated people.  Now it’s a kayak nurse ship.  Bright red kayaks paddled hesitantly away from it.  We are both fascinated by the Columbia.  Ordinarily we would have hovered nearby to get a good look at her.  This time, however, we kept on going in an effort to make the high slack at Roaring Hole. [1] The Columbia caught up and passed us at Watson Point and preceded us East around Watson Island till it turned south east into Kenneth Passage.   
      We were at close to full speed to make the slack.  Mark was on the bow with the binoculars trying to see the slit in the rocks, the narrow passage that is Roaring Hole.  We were closing in and still at full throttle; still an unbroken wall of rock.  Mark jabbed this hand repeatedly at a point in the wall.  I throttled back straining to see a break....