An excerpt from Chapter 9, Owen Bay

......Owen Bay, on the southeastern shore of Sonora Island, near the junction of the Hole In The Wall with the Okisollo Rapids, lies about 120 miles north of Vancouver by boat. It is a serene, almost landlocked harbour that casts an eerie spell. On a full running tide, the roar of the rapids can be heard in the distance.

The pass leading into Owen Bay has a rock to the left marked by kelp. We used to jig for cod there when we were kids. To the right there are several small islets between the pass and Springer Point on the main shore of Sonora Island.

Sonora Island was named in 1903 in memory of the Spanish schooner Sonora commanded by Juan Francisco de la Bodega Quadra, the Spanish naval officer who explored and charted the British Columbia coast in 1791. Owen Bay was named by Captain David Pender, R.N., master of the surveying vessel Beaver in 1864, after Commander Fredrick John Owen Evans, R.N., of the Admiralty Hydrographic Office.

In Owen Bay there are many smaller bays and coves, sheltered by rocky bluffs covered with sweet-smelling pine trees and golden moss. On the northeastern side, there is a high cliff. A great gash has been taken out of its sheer face, as if from the shock of some heavy object. When we lived in Owen Bay in the 1930s and as youngsters, we were told a meteorite had landed there many years ago. Looking for fragments of the meteorite was one of our favourite summer excursions, though we had no idea what to look for as we searched among the rubble at the bottom of the cliff.

I thought about Owen Bay many years later while I was sailing across the Indian Ocean aboard the Kelea. It was about two o'clock in the morning, I was on watch when suddenly I felt a glow of heat and the ocean around me lit up as bright as day, as a deafening crackling hissing sound came from above. It was an experience I will never forget. I sat frozen in the cockpit for many minutes wondering if it might happen again. Watching the stars twinkling in the sky, I realized that a meteorite had come down into the ocean - like the one that hit the cliff in Owen Bay.

Owen Bay was first occupied in the early 1900s by loggers working for the Pacific Coast and Chemainus Lumber Company, with timber leases there and at Venture Point. When the company moved its operations elsewhere, the workmen moved as well. The exception was Harry Pedersen, known as "Whisky Harry" because he liked an occasional drink. Harry stayed on and worked the land at Owen Bay. His homestead occupied the foreshore and the land directly behind what remains of the government dock today. For a long time the bay belonged to Harry. There was always a cup of coffee and a chew of snuff or some vegetables from the garden for folks who dropped by. Some visitors, like August Schnarr and Logan Schibler, stayed on and settled. No one knows what happened to Harry; one day he just disappeared. Some people said he drowned. His body was never found.

Another excerpt from the chapter:

.....A few years later the name Owen Bay came up again, while I was interviewing someone for my "Offshore People" column in Pacific Yachting. I had been forewarned by a friend that the man I was going to interview had an unusual ghost story to tell. When I had finished the interview, I asked him about it. He told me that he really didn't believe in ghosts, but that an unexplained occurrence in Owen Bay had left him reconsidering his beliefs. With a strange expression on his face, he proceeded to tell me what had happened.

"My boat was one of six tied to the government dock that evening. I still have trouble believing that it actually happened, but during the night one by one the people on the other boats started their engines, untied their vessels and moved to the head of the bay. To tell the truth I really couldn't figure out what was going on. It's crazy to be leaving your moorage in the middle of the night. My cruising companion agreed as we watched the last boat leave the dock. It was a very dark night but the stars were as bright as I've ever seen them.

I went back to bed feeling there was something spooky about the place. Shivering, I pulled the blankets over my head. It was so quiet I could have heard a pin drop. Then suddenly we heard someone walking on the deck right above our head. 'Who in the hell is that?' I shouted. No one answered, and when we looked out there was no one there.

We went back to bed but couldn't sleep. Then, sure enough, there were footsteps again. This time we got up and searched the dock thoroughly, but there was no one to be seen. At that point we decided to ignore the intruder and went back to bed, and once again pulled the blankets over our heads, stuffing part of them in our ears hoping to shut out any sounds.

There wasn't much hope of that as suddenly there was a great clanging noise on the deck. Something was picking up the boom chains we had found that day and dropping them on the foredeck over our heads. We jumped out of bed and practically collided in the companionway in our hurry to get on deck. Yet when we got there, there was no one to be seen. This time we also started our engine, untied our lines and moved to the head of the bay."

His mention of boom chains recalled to me with a start a conversation I had overheard long ago between my mother and father. They were talking about two men whose bodies had been dragged out of the nearby waters. The bodies had boom chains wrapped around them. (A boom chain weighs about a hundred pounds and is used to chain a boom together.)

The subject of Owen Bay surfaced again several years later in the summer of 1979, while I was cruising aboard the Jubilee in Desolation Sound. I was talking to an American couple about anchorages in the area. When they mentioned Owen Bay, I half jokingly asked them if they had seen any ghosts and they looked uncertainly at each other. Then the man told me that his wife thought she had seen someone lighting a candle in the small shed near the dock, but no one was there when they looked. Hesitating, he continued: "And when we turned in, we heard the creaking of oarlocks as if someone was rowing towards us through the darkness - but the sound never got closer.".........