Was That a Grizzly?

BY DIANA M. DAVIDSON

TPoint, so we motored over to tie to a boom at Slate Creek so we weren’t there when he arrived.

forward cabin.

The Liza Jane is a 32-foot wooden boat. Deep hulled and slow moving; made even slower moving by being tethered to a 14-foot Zodiac with a 60-horsepower motor. One night during a week-long cruise, we anchored behind Patrick Point at the east end of Queen’s Reach in Jervis Inlet, with no other boats in sight.

We heard that a grizzly had been seen swimming the three miles across the inlet from Potato Creek to Patrick

Before bed I was so nervous I did something I’ve never done before—I locked down the boat. I got to thinking about the grizzly following its nose straight to the Liza Jane, trying to get at our garbage stuffed into a locker in the Zodiac, which probably reeked of valuable calories to a hungry bear. Would Mark and I be dessert?

I started thinking we should leave the forward hatch unlocked so we could escape if the bear came in the stern door off the cockpit. I imagined the grizzly swimming up to the boat, gripping the swim board with its huge arms, clambering aboard and ripping off the stern door. Consequently, I moved one of the bear sprays to the

I put the bear spray on the desk near our bunk where, I realized sadly, we’d probably have a maximum of 11 seconds to wake up, realize what was happening, orient to the dark, control our terror, remember where the spray was, leap out of bed, fumble for the spray, open the holster, mess around getting the plastic safety block off before carefully taking aim. I needed a better plan!

I went forward and latched the head door open to eliminate at least one problem. My plan was to leap from my bed onto the narrow counters that are on either side of the head, throw off the hatch cover, haul Mark up after me and then we’d fire the bear spray at the

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