Canadian Gulf Islands to the BC mainland, July 4th-7th

From Prevost Island, we headed to Clam bay, which is a wide open anchorage and a good spot to set up for crossing the Strait of Georgia to the BC mainland.

 

Lotta wood chips

One neat feature of this anchorage is “The Cut” which is a channel that was dug out in the early 1900’s to connect Clam Bay to Telegraph Harbour. The channel hasn’t been maintained but is still passable “most of the time” by small boat or dinghy. We waited for the tide to start coming back up from a low-low before heading through with our dinghy, but still ended up getting stuck (along with some locals who had been out fishing on our side of the Cut). The tide was coming in really fast, so it was just a matter of floating along until we hit bottom, waiting a few minutes for the water to rise, then repeating- about a dozen times…

We got to the other side eventually and found the reward for our perseverance in the form of pizza and ice cream at Telegraph Harbor.

From Clam Bay, we set out the next morning to catch slack water at Porlier Pass, then out into the Strait of Georgia to cross over to the mainland. The weather was fine, with light following winds and calm seas.

We anchored in Buccaneer bay for the night, then set a course for a nice anchorage at hardy Island that we remembered from our last trip through here. On the way, we made a stop at Pender Harbour at tied up at the Municipal dock for a few hours for some re-provisioning, lunch, internet, and a very successful stop at the local thrift store ($3 Canadian for two nice pairs of boat slippers!).

Pender harbor to Hardy Island to Desolation Sound (from Sue):

After supplying up at Pender Harbour, we headed over to Hardy Island for the night. Found a peaceful anchorage where we lounged outside on the deck, listened to music and made dinner.

Then we headed up to Prideaux Haven in Desolation Sound. This was one of our favorite spots last time and we wanted to make a point of going back.

Aside from the beautiful scenery and (usually) sunny location, its a good spot for prawns. Oh yeah, definitely wanted to go back there. On the way into our anchorage we dropped our prawn pot off before heading in. I got very excited when I noticed one of the boats in the anchorage was the same as one of the reference books we’ve been using. Wow, the author was here – very cool. Not to mention he had a unique looking boat.

Unfortunately, soon after we anchored, they picked up and left before we had a chance to go over and say hi. In looking closer at the boat as it left we saw it had a different name, so it probably had been sold and wasn’t the author anyway.  Did take a dingy ride around and saw lots of jelly fish and a pileated woodpecker. Not to mention a couple of ravens having a shrieking contest – damn those birds are loud.

We set the Prawn Trap out for the night by Mary Islands just outside the anchorage and had a peaceful night on the hook.

No Signal!

So we've been without wifi or data connection for almost a week now (and no cell service most of the time as well). This is great in a lot of ways, but not so great for sharing our adventures, pictures, and videos on this blog. We have travelled from the Canadian Gulf Islands up to the Broughten Islands and are currently in Sullivan Bay where there is just enough wifi bandwidth to send this text report ("no pictures or videos allowed, and keep it short!"). We plan on anchoring in Blunden Harbor for a couple of nights to rest up for an open water crossing to Fitz Hugh Sound (North of Vancouver Island) in a couple of days. After that, we will be transiting some pretty remote wilderness on our way to Prince Rupert, and the BC/Alaska border. We are having a great time and look forward to catching the blog up with our travels when we are able to connect at some of the little villages and towns along the way to Prince Rupert. You can follow our location on one of the vessel tracking websites like "ship finder" or "marine traffic". More to come soon...

Prevost Island

We are currently at the public wharf in Pender Harbour, about 40 miles SE of Desolation Sound.

This is a quick provisioning stop before we head to Hardy Island for the night.

Found a local cafe with a good bowl of chicken noodle soup and a grilled cheese sandwich- perfect lunch for a drizzly Northwest day. Good internet here so will catch up with some pics from the last few days:

After dropping off Will and Lauren to fly home from Victoria, we left Oak Bay Marina and headed out for a couple of nights at James Bay on Prevost Island. A nice place to unwind and unpack from our transit from SF. This anchorage is open to the NW, and so we had lovely sunsets with nice weather. Perfect for cocktail hour and dinners on the aft deck.

Next day, we went ashore at the head of the bay (at low tide) and rolled our dinghy up the beach far enough so it wouldn’t float away when the tide came up. Looks like about a 10 foot tide range here, so we were super cautious and ended up rolling our boat up the beach much further than we probably needed to.

We hiked out to Peile Point - about two miles round trip through cedar forests and interesting rock formations.

Then we hiked around the South side of the bay to an abandoned fruit orchard (too early for fruit) and kayak-in campground. Huge oysters and clams everywhere on the beaches and rocks, but not safe to eat on this part of the coast.

From Prevost Island, we re-started our trek North with stops at Clam Bay/Thetis Island, across the Straits of Georgia to the mainland, Buccaneer bay, and Hardy island. Will post more pics at our next wifi cafe stop.

Canada Day

Had we done our homework, we would have realized that this was Canada Day (similar to our July Fourth) and Victoria was mayhem (or at least the canadian version of mayhem).

The customs dock at the head of the harbor was suspiciously quiet, while around the corner downtown was in full festival mode with live music, street fair, food trucks, and everyone finding their spots for the fireworks show that evening. Of course the inner harbor was packed with boats and there were no berths available anywhere near town.

Fortunately, the folks at Oak Bay Marina (around the point, north of Victoria) took pity on us clueless Americans and let us tie up at the fuel dock for the night.

Once secured there we took a cab into town, had a killer Tapas dinner, and walked all over downtown Victoria.

Sadly, Will and Lauren had to head home the next day. They were a great crew and we hope to get them back up here sometime this summer for some proper relaxed cruising on the way home.

Leaving Oak Bay on Tuesday, we made an easy 6 hour transit to Prevost Island and anchored in James Bay. This is a nice spot, well protected and good holding in mud and shells. We have been here for a couple of days relaxing, getting things “unpacked” from the trip North, and grooving into Cruising Mode. Took a nice three mile hike onshore, met a cool local guy who was kayak camping on the beach at the head of the bay, and worked on plans for the next week or so. Will post some pics of Prevost Island when we get another spot of decent wifi.

As of now, we have decided to head up to the North end of the Canadian Gulf Islands for one more overnight, then cross the Strait of Georgia to the mainland with overnights at Gambier Island and Hardy or Nelson Island on our way to Desolation Sound.

Up the Coast (updated with a couple of videos clips)

Well, this trip went pretty much as planned, with just a bit of nasty unexpected weather at the end.
We left on Wed 6/26 at 0500 with a nice send off from our neighbors at Galilee Harbor (thanks for getting up early guys). Our crew consisted of our good friends and neighbors Will and Lauren, and Kona the cat.

Up the coast was unusually benign weather, mostly NW winds 5-15 kts and seas ranging from 4-6ft to almost zero.

Everyone's favorite spot on the bow when the weather is nice:

Saw lots of whales, pacific white-sided dolphins, albatross, sea lions, and even some sharks (blues I think).

We originally planned on 5 days (120 hrs of transit time with no stops from Sausalito to Victoria, British Columbia. We ended up a little closer to 130 hrs in transit due to a big ebb (3-5 kts) in the straights of Juan De Fuca. We also had some pretty good westerlies building through the afternoon.
This gave us some steep wind-against-tide seas for about 6 hrs heading East. The seas moderated a bit with the turn of the tide, just as winds kicked up on their way to a forecast gale later that afternoon. We managed to beat the predicted big afternoon winds out in the straights, and landed at the Victoria customs dock at 130pm on July 1st. Check in is by phone at the dock. Love the way they do things here...

-PB