I post this with new appreciation of our most southern and  homebound passage.  Most times – many more times than our six passages all the way to Alaska – the southern BC coast has come at the beginning of our cruise.  This year it was at the end.  We now recognize that the section of the southern BC coast south of Seymour Narrows to Port Townsend is the most difficult leg of the cruise. Eager to just conclude another perfect cruise without incident, we paid special attention to many narrows, rapids and narrows along the way.  While there are tidal exchanges never reach 25 feed as they do in Alaska, currents in the most challenging rapids run 9 knots and there are a number of narrows that can only be taken at slack.  Stay turned for some  navigation exercises based on our lessons learned.  I’ll propose scenarios that mariners can use to test their abilities and better plan their passages.

After two months of calm weather, a gale warning finally caused us to slow down. Waiting out storms is wonderful.  We spent two nights at dock in the heart of Nanaimo Harbor and two at anchor in Montague Harbour on Gabriola Island before passing customs at Friday Harbor.

On July 19, we tied up at Boat Haven Slip D-230 on  Port Townsend  Bay  and scootered and biked the mile home to our house on Admiralty Inlet, where every morning we watch cruisers from all over Puget Sound ride the ebb out to their adventures to the North.

Saturday 6 July  – Waddington Cove   50º43’N 126º36.8’W

Early-birding as usually so we can spend the afternoon in the sun is a stupid idea today. We pull out of clear Blunden Harbour and motor into Queen Charlotte Strait and into patches of fog, as noted in Jack’s log.  Do patches refer to different qualities of fog?  Like sometimes there’s a boat length of visibility and sometimes ten boat lengths?  Or that at times we can see just the tops of things like rocks and ships? And at other times just the bottoms?  Sure, the fog quality is inconsistent. That doesn’t make it any easier.  Repetitive stress in my focussing muscles.  I just want to shut my eyes. Instead I’m on watch in the bow, listening for vessels not squawking AIS, blowing the fog horn for five seconds every two minutes, listening for replies from other ships – or echos off silent shores. And then running back to the cockpit and down the companionway to check the radar.  

We manage it. Jack navigates, pouring his concentration into the two chart plotters and one papar chart and while following a few AIS targets.  The Columbia, the great Alaska ferry from Bellingham, sounds its fog horn nearby but soon we veer off from the main shipping lane toward the Broughtons. I help avoid a number of collusions with logs, some two feet in diameter others sixty feet long by shouting back to Jack: 3 degrees to port! Sharp turn to the right, please.  Half of these are false alarms.  Please tell me I’m not the only sailor whose tired eyes mistake detached length of bull kelp for a floating telephone pole?

Why does my optimism get the best of me? Why did I think there wouldn’t be fog here today?  The weather report has been the same for days.  (Patches of) fog dissipating about noon.  Yep, over six solid hours of fog. It clears only as we wend our way into our anchorage.  At noon. When the Broughton boats start to venture out. 

Let’s review: 1) Fog is awful.  2) Fog dissipates at noon.  When will we learn?

Monday 8 July  Port Harvey 50º34’N 126º16’W

We’re starting to see a few more boats. The fishing and prawning must not be great because we’re not seeing those boats but rec sailors and power boaters are out. Lagoon Cove is in business so we turn in, greeted by two large fish farms that we’re there the last time we were here. Angela takes the lines and we tie up for both fuel and water. She lives with her partner on the Hans Christian from Victoria tied up nearby. As year rounders, they likely move into the former house in the winter.  Angela says they’re doing this best to retain the culture of the late owner (and renowned story teller) Bill Barber.  The prawn traps are set every day and the catch boiled and set out on a long table in the boat house  at 5pm joined by offerings from each of the boat.  And she says the fish farms operated by the Norwegian firm Greig are going away.  Angela’s partner, a convivial dark haired man, unties our lines as we leave, the first time anyone has untied our lines on this cruise. Noticing we’re from Port Townsend, he exclaims, “I love Port Townsend! The last time we were there, I got these tattoos!”  He displays the insides of his wrists. Simple and traditional. One an anchor, the other a ship’s wheel.

After motoring down narrow Chatham Channel near slack we’re at anchor in Port Harvey. We’ve come here in hopes of seeing Gail enormously over-named Port Harvey Marine Resort to offer condolences.  But she’s not here.

To learn of our discovery and love of this place just Just keyword search Port Harvey on this blog. The only other resort we do is Gorge Harbor ( pool, good restaurant, rooms to rent, camping, grocery story, paddle board to rent!) and we go there because it’s one (of only two places on the entire Inside Passage) that merit 5 out of 5 points on the McCreary Scale of Accessibility and Welcome to Aging Sailors (MCAWAS).  FYI the second destination is by no means a resort. Search and maybe you can find it.)

But I digress. Port Harvey Marine Resort is not really a resort either. Certainly no pool, fine restaurant, accommodations, camping, grocery store, or paddle boards to rent.  Port Harvey Marine Resort is simply in the right place.  Location, location, location.  It’s just off Johnstone Strait, offering respire from an obligatory fifteen mile stretch of the Inside Passage that can go vertical with wind against current.  

George and Gail Campbell opened this place about 7 years ago.  They worked their tails off.  Albertans.  But not big yacht Albertans, owners of an Alberta hardware store.  Retiree.  Not big, showoff, ffi-ng yacht Albertans but crusty, resilient, somewhat contrarian, Albertans.  They built a great dock.  With benches and smooth enough for a mobility scooter. On a floating bladder of some kind they erected a two storey building with a store on the bottom- mostly hardware! thank you! – and a restaurant on the top, where they baked beard you could buy and honed their skills at pizza. 

Then it all sank.  Gone. 

Year rounders living on site, George and Gail got a real barge and set up a tent so they could serve pizza to guests in the summer.  Last summer after being beaten up on Johnstone, Gail was at the dock in a safety vest to take our lines, working on her own as George was away.  She handed us the pizza menu with the wifi passcode and said, If you want to order a pizza, I can bring it right to the boat.”  Amen.  

Last fall, we wept when the latest issue of Pacific Yachting magazine told us George had died.  

Tuesday 9 July – Blind Channel  

Now we’re on the stretch with the rapids and we have to time our arrivals and departures very carefully. There are five sets of rapids:  Whirlpool, Green Point, Dent, Gillard, and Yaculta.  Like Seymour Narrows to the west, they must be taken at or very near slack tide.  Like Seymour, these narrows ebb north into Johnstone and Queen Charlotte Straits and flood south into the Salish Sea.  

An essential aspect of seamanship – particularly for a slow boat – is figuring out a strategy for these rapids. Every time is different of course because the tides change every day.  Jack is doing the navigation on this trip. Still after he works out the calculations and determines the timings, I sit down and work it out on my own in hopes of coming to the same conclusion.  

Today we haul anchor at 6am and leave Port Harvey to be out on Johnstone in the morning. We’re hoping for a northwesterly.  Instead we get a southeast “noserly,” though a gentle one that doesn’t chop up the flood that takes us to Forward Harbour, where we spend a pleasant day at anchor waiting for the late afternoon high slack in nearby Whirlpool Rapids.  

Jack notes in his log: Took Whirlpool/Welbore 50 minutes early against current.  Took Green Point 50 minutes late with favorable current. Early and late in reference to slack time.

This is the perfect strategy for this day in the tidal neap cycle. Weeks when the moon is first quarter or last quarter have neap tides, that is tidal exchanges that are more moderate than the spring tides that (in these parts) result around full and new moons.  Running these two sets of rapids when the volume of waters running though them is larger is quite a different story. They are some distance apart and lack a convenient place between them to drop anchor.

We’ve call ahead to Blind Channel, itself located on a passage with a lot of current, and despite our late arrival they can they accommodate us.  The Richter family’s restaurant appeals after a long day.  (This happens to be our 48th anniversary, tough we realize this a week later.)

I learn from Tiffany, who minds the shop-post office-liquor outlet, that Blind Channel is thriving as a transportation center.  Their fuel dock has long been the place where local fishermen unload their prawns and sea urchins directly onto flat planes for transfer onto flights to Asia. Now they have a fleet of four aluminum work boats of their own, two for passengers and a couple of boats that can unload heavier cargo right onto a float or the shore.  They offer water taxi service, wildlife tours, and provisioning for the fish farms and logging camps in the area.  

Wednesday 10 July – Shoal Bay  50º27.5’N 125º21.9’W

A raging rainstorm keeps us at the dock in Blind Channel and we consider staying an extra day.  Not the most appealing option what with the laundry done, hopeless Internet service, and constant rocking on rough waters.  Shoal Bay is an hour away and in order to catch the the next three set of rapids without pre-dawn departure we need to be there.

The float at the Shoal Bay wharf is full but as we pass the skipper of the 37 foot Nordic Tug “Sunday” steps out and says we can raft up next to him.  This is proper protocol here but not always so automatic.

 “Can we do a starboard tie?  Our bow to your stern?”  

That’s okay, too.  “Thank you!”

Mike’s already rafted to another boat and our departure time augers for an outside position so we don’t need to wake anyone up. Mike and Beverly deploy their new extra set of fenders as we put out our dirty and mismatched ones.

It pours all afternoon. At five pm I suit up, climb over the sterns of the adjacent boats, and go pay the moorage. Wharfinger Mark McDonald is pulling a single tap at a new bar near the pizza oven offering a delightful beer from a new craft brewery in Campbell River.  

The new bar is on a platform built on the site of the lodge that burned down the year after Mark bought the place.  This is another reminder of the trials, tribulations and shear amount of back breaking work that these year-rounders endure to provide safe harbor for mariners.

As the travelogues of the 1920s reveal, there were settlements all along this stretch one time.  Not only were there First Nations villages of traditional longhouses, but fishing, logging and mining settlements.  During an early gold rush, Shoal Bay became a town of 5,000!   In 192? University of Washington student Betty ????? ???? was able to solo pilot a dug out canoe from Seattle to Ketchikan, finding helping hands and provisions along the way.  Her story is in Bijaboji, a book she signed for me when I met her at a Wooden Boat Festival shortly before her passing.  Starting in 1927, Muriel Wylie Blanchet spent many summers cruising these waters with her five children in a 25-foot wooden boat.  Her account in The Curve of Time is a beloved classic of British Columbia literature found in many a cruising ship library.

Thursday 11 July – Gorge Harbour  50º05.9’N 125º01.3’W

We leave Shoal Bay at 5:30am and head toward Dent Rapids the first of the three sets of narrows we’ll traverse this morning. Our Waggoners reminds us that Dent runs up to 9 knots on flood currents and 8 on ebbs and quotes from Canada’s Sailing Directions  In Devil’s Hole, violent eddies and whirlpools form between 2 hours after turn to flood and 1 hour before turn to ebb.  With so few hours near slack when it’s safe for a vessel of any size to be in these waters, we can expect 

No sooner do we cross the intersection where Frederick Arm and Chancellor meet Cordero Channel than the fog surrounds us.  

We had not counted on this. We have barely a boat length of visibility and adrenalin kicks in to keep us focussed.  Jack is on the helm monitoring the radio and the AIS. I’m at the bow except when running back to check the radar screen. It’s mounted in the companionway, which is an okay spot for a multi -week Pacific crossing but not so useful for the tight quarters of these legendary rapids. 

The sight of another slow sail boat cheers us; it augurs well for our calculations. Soon we coordinate fog horns. Our 5 second blasts follow each other a minute apart.  That tells anyone quiet enough to hear us that there are two boats, each blowing at the required 2 minute intervals.  

It also augurs well that it’s so early in the morning. What appears before us on the radar is rocky shores with a sliver of water between.  No boats. The only AIS targets are a tug towing a log boom at 1.1 knots that we pass in front of and the superyacht Huntress, which emerges from the fog behind us after we are out of danger.

We don’t see the shore – not even a shadow behind the fog – as we pass through Dent and Gillard Rapids.  Out in Big Bay the fog lifts. Oh Mercy!  Yaculta spits us out into Calm Cannel and we head into the Discovery Islands. 

By now we’re ready for the creature comforts of Gorge Harbour. Impeccably-trained staff who greet every passerby, setting the tone of the place. Fresh produce from local farms. Fully accessible paths, including right to the railing of the hot tub. Great wifi. Morning yoga. And evening music we can enjoy right from the boat.

Saturday 13 July – Boho Bay on Lesqueti Island 49º29.8’N  124º13.9’W

The bad news is there was no wind.  The good news is being back at Lesquiti.

Lesqueti lies just to the SW of Taxeda Island in the middle of the Strait of Georgia, between the thickly populated shores of Vancouver Island and Great Vancouver on the mainland. It’s inhabited by only a few leftover hippies, off griders, and mom and pop seafood farms.  Lesquiti is a wonderful place to hang out before reentering urban North America.

Sunday 14 July – Nanaimo  49.10’N  123º56’W

It’s as choppy as ever getting to Nanaimo, even with Whiskey Golf open to traffic.  Harbour master finds a place for us on the fish boat float right next to the city’s deservedly famous Trollers Fish and Chips. 

A couple of hooka boats land about 18 orange plastic crates of geoducks, eight big ones per layer, maybe four layers per crate.  That’s a lot of clams.  Each protrudes substantially from either end of a dark oval shell that’s held partially shut with a big rubber band.  I muse about the man- (no women on either crew) hours required to harvest, tether and pack these creatures for the fish tanks of markets and restaurants in China.  The BC fisheries inspector and the workers who took the catch off to the airport were on the docks when the catch landed.  No wonder geoduck is so expensive and fails to show up on local restaurant menus.  

It’s the weekend of The Silly Boat Race and there are 2000 spectators on the waterfront.  There are Canadians of every stripe, age, shape and color.  I’m reminded how unlikely it will for me to see such a blossoming of multiculturalism in any Pacific Northwest city this size on the other side of the border.

And then, as we’re enjoying ourselves on the harbour walk, a huge tug enters Nanaimo Harbour.   We follow its movements as it ties up at the fuel dock.  It’s the General Jackson!  Built in 1958, this tug is clearly showing its age.

On Monday morning we tackle a couple of problems, getting up early to see who might want a couple of hours of work lending a hand.  We call around but no one will have time until Thursday.  As Jack and I discuss next steps, we’re overheard by a guy walking past with two new crab traps who wonders what we need.  I tell him we’ve got two manageable problems. There are 125 feet of chain lying on deck because there’s a bight jammed in the tube.  Plus midsummer in Alaska caused us to neglect our running lights.  He follows Jack down to the boat while I deliver the crab pots to his family on S/V Equilibrium.  By the time I’m back, the anchor chain is free is ready to be flaked and he’s explaining to Jack how to mend a running light as he does it.  Nathan’s a quicker problem solver than we are and we’re not too bad. 

After a walk to the Chandelery for the necessary bulb we have lunch in a Greek taverna uptown in the Old City.  I hit a favorite resale shop for three good tops and a new pair of pants for $68 Canadian or less than $50 US and spend an hour at the excellent City of Nanaimo museum.

Tuesday 16 July  48º53.6’N  123º23.9’W   Montague Harbour, Galiano Island, BC

When we reach Dodd Narrows on the early side of slack.  Jack calls me to take over the helm while he navigates. The Narrows is still a boil of whirlpools but it’s short and the nearly two knots of current shoot us through and out into broad clear waters.  Fifteen minutes later we witness a Dodd Narrows traffic jam.  Fast northbound boats are nosing in before slow southbound ones are through.  Lots of voices on VHF.  There are requests for caution and announcements of flotillas that have formed informally, testing strength in numbers. 

“Securité, Securité, Securité. We are five motor vessels and two sailboats entering Dodd Narrows southbound. Any concerned traffic please advise, channel one-six.”

We’ve always thought these warnings unnecessary but with so many last minute boats, they make a bit more sense.

It’s a beautiful day on Tricomali Channel. The CBC has been airing the best podcasts of the past year. I listen to a fascinating one featuring a couple who fled the Nexxim cult after 12 years. It seems many Vancouverites have been or still are members.  

It’s always nice to be at Montague. Even with 95 other boats at anchor in good mud or on buoys, it’s hardly crowded. 

We held over at Montague and had enjoyable down day thanks to gale winds from just south of there to Port Townsend.

Wednesday 18 July   Friday Harbor, San Juan Island, WA

What is the impact of citizen science?  Well, it can be a one of a kind discovery.  I stop by the Whale Museum just to see what’s new.   Lots is new but I’m stopped in my tracks by a skeleton… of what?  Four fore flippers?  Two skulls?

Turns out it is the only known specimen of conjoined harbor seal twins.

The discovery was made by Orcas Island citizen scientists with the Marine Mammal Stranding Network.  The Network trains the public on marine mammal behavior and trains citizens to act.  A whale or porpoise or dolphin on a beach is an emergency.  If the animal is alive, measures are taken to keep it cool and alive until it can be coaxed out to sea on a high tide.  A hauled out seal or sea lion is a different matter.  It’s normal behavior for these animals to rest on shore, or to leave their young sleeping on a rock while they fish for food.  In such a case, Marine Mammal Stranding Network volunteers put up yellow caution tape and talk to passers by, reminding them not to disturb the animals.  When they find a dead animal, they remove it and bring it to the attention of specialists.  

The Orcas Islanders found a female who most likely died while trying to give birth to conjoined twins, something fairly unknown among marine mammals.  The twins each had their own essential organs but were under developed and would not have survived.  Photo and story are here.   

Friday 19 July  Port Townsend

We were the first boat out of Friday Harbor but caught a buoy at beautiful Watmough Bay on Lopez for a rest and to wait for the flood down the Strait.  Of course Point Wilson misbehaved while we waited out the passing of a very slow but very large container ship.  By 3pm we were moored in our new slip, Boat Haven’s D-230.  Slept on the hard for the first time in nearly 10 weeks.