Author Archives: Courtney Edwards

West Wind

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Strong West wind all day. Mixed weather, everything from clear skies to sideways rain.

4 tour boats
DND blasting: Several super loud blasts late morning.

The generator started up just fine this afternoon. Yeah!

There are now 10 Elephant seals on Great Race. There are 6 below the tower by the hose box, two in the garden West of the Keeper’s house, and two lying just up from the tank shed. Needless to say, there are a lot of detours off the paths for me to get between the buildings since they seem to like sleeping on the very edge of the paths. I found another Canada goose nest today on the very edge of the island just East of the big yellow diesel tank. There are 7 nests on the island: on the East beach behind a rough stack rock wall, one next to the compost pile on the South side of the Keeper’s house, one just East of the base of the tower, one under the tower stairs, the nest I found today just East of the diesel tank, a nest West of the Science house underneath a log, and one on the East side of the camera on the bluff. There is still one pair of geese that I am pretty sure have a nest right in the middle of the island by the Science house, but I haven’t been able to find it yet. It looks like the Snow Goose is gone, but the lone Cackling Goose is still around. The Sea lions are still camped out on West Rocks. There were 4 Bald Eagles on South Rocks this morning. The Eagles, both juveniles and adults, are regularly flying over the island and stirring up the Gulls, but I have yet to see a Gull get taken by an Eagle. The Barn swallows are still cruising around, no sign yet of any nests. The Guillemots are still spending a lot of time on the jetty. And I’ve been watching the Oyster catchers, but I haven’t seen any nesting behaviour.

-Cleaned up the generator room
-Keeper’s house chores: laundry, cleaned the stand up freezer, tidied up the basement workshop, replaced some light bulbs, cleaned the really dirty windows, turned the North entryway into the best tea/reading/guitar spot in the house.

Generator Repair

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Light wind and clear skies for most of the day. Picked up to strong North-East/ East winds with rain this evening. This wind direction makes the South-East door whistle like crazy. The water is a total mess right now.

5 tour boats

DND blasting: several small blasts in the morning. 3 loud ones in the afternoon.

Erik brought Ric the electrician out with the new voltage regulator this morning. It took some fiddling, but the generator is back in working order. I ran it today for a few hours, along with the desalinator. Happy to be able to do some laundry.

The Elephant seals put on a good show for Ric. There are 8 seals lounging next to the pathways between the boat shed and energy building. They are the strangest creatures to live with. There is one juvenile that is getting  bolder with each day, slowly making it further up the path towards where all the other seals are piled up next to the hose box. There is one with scabby-molt that always stays apart from the group and avoids any seals that come to visit. There is one large adult seal that seems to be blind in one eye; it’s left eye has a hollow, white look to it. One seal has a flipper tag, but I couldn’t get a photo of it. Will try again tomorrow.

Summer shift change has been organized. Julie Bowser will be returning for her third shift starting mid-June and ending in late August.

Cackling goose and Snow goose

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Light Wind in the morning, String Westerly in the evening. Cloudy with scattered showers. Rain in the evening. Tour boats:8 1030 flyover by a small float plane The Cackling Goose and Snow Goose (note — a new record for Race Rocks ) are still foraging on the grass on Great Race. The Canada Geese often chase these two smaller geese. The Sea lions all moved to the East side of West Rocks this morning. Up until today, they had been on South Rocks since I got here in the middle of March. Eagles are regularly flying over Great Race and making all the Gulls take flight, but I have yet to see an Eagle grab a Gull.

-Ran the fire pump -Cleaned all the fire hose fittings -Fixed tank shed storage door latch -Worked on SOPs

Rain

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Cloudy skies, with rain. Light Northerly winds. Calm seas.

2 tour boats

The Canada Geese seemed pleased with all the puddles of freshwater from the rain overnight. They were drinking and splashing/bathing all day. There was an Elephant seal on the grass in front of the desalinator bunker this morning. Then, after an hour or so of growling and gurgling, she just up and and left. Still lots of Eagles. The Gulls are getting pretty busy, especially up on the peak of the roof. I was wondering what they were up to all night, smashing around up there. This morning I went out and watched them do this sideways flying-skip manoeuvre while one chases the other. Their clickety-clackety bird claws make a ruckus on the sheet metal roof.

Checked the battery bank at sunrise. It still had a decent charge, even after a cloudy day. Chris says he’s found a supplier for the broken voltage controller, which could arrive tomorrow.

-Started a GIS project for Race Rocks using the free program QGIS and an orthophoto from the CRD Atlas.
-Built and set up 3 more goose exclusion fences
-Cleaned Keeper’s house

Technicians

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Overcast/Cloudy. Moderate West wind all day.

Erik brought out two techs from Environment Canada to service the weather station at the top of the tower. They realized a wiring error in their system after we had one of the main inverters burnout several weeks ago. They also fixed the old-school barograph I’ve had sitting broken in the kitchen since I found it in a closet on my last shift. This model of barograph (literally a barometer with a drum+graph used to track the tendency of atmospheric pressure) was standard issue for weather stations from Environment Canada for many years. The unit out here is from 1961, with an upgraded clock from 1977. I recently found a spare clock and drum for it, now the only things missing are graph paper for the drum and a new ink tip.

Ric the electrician also came out to start troubleshooting the generator issue. After some scrounging I found several manuals for components of the energy system. So far he has found a broken voltage controller that might be the culprit. We are now waiting on the part to see if this is the only problem.

A group of Pearson College visitors (Dave Skilling + 3) also came out for a brief tour and visit of the Reserve.

6 super loud blasts through out the day from DND that left the techs a little startled since the buildings shake when a big one goes off.

Gale

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Clear skies all day. Super calm, glassy morning. Blowing West 40+ by mid-afternoon. It always pays to do your chores when the weather is nice.

3 tour boats.

People keep telling me that sometime last week there was a pod of Orcas in the reserve harassing the seals. I must have been looking in the opposite direction.

There was a boat fishing within the reserve. They did not respond to radio calls, or to me standing on the jetty blowing a whistle and waving my arms. I reported them to the illegal fishing hotline.

-Set up hoses from low-pressure pump on the desal unit to the PV panels so I can use water from the cistern to keep panels clean
-Fixed some loose wiring on the Whaler

Calm evening

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Clear skies. North-East wind in the morning, glassy calm by evening. Awesome sunset.

There’s been 3 different Elephant seals on/near the jetty the past couple days. One had a weird/blind left eye, and one had a green tag that I couldn’t read because it was in the water. Still lots of Eagles and Pigeon Guillemots. Keith found a new goose nest.

The generator is still down, and will continue to be so until we can get ahold of a technician. The solar panels and battery bank continue to provide sufficient energy.

My kayak friends, Keith and Jacob, left on the slack tide this morning.
Off station from from 1330 to 1600 on a grocery run

Generator

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Clear skies, calm wind.

The generator is not working. Yesterday it shutdown a moment after starting up. The shutdown switch says it was because of “hi/low volts”. Chris suspects it is the voltage controller on the generator. The battery bank,charge controllers, and inverters are all running fine. I am glad that it has been sunny these past few days because there is enough light to charge the battery bank for basic operations. All extraneous power/phantom draws have been shutdown and unplugged. It is also a reminder to always keep the water tank topped up (which I do) since the desalinator needs the generator to run. The mission now is to keep the solar panels nice and clean throughout the day.

Slack tide kayak visit from two of my friends.
Chris brought out this year’s Coutts lecturer Massimiliano Gioni +a handful of students +a guest and 2 kids