Author: Dan Cordell

Alert Bay

The first of the First Nations communities we anchored at, Alert Bay, has lots of totem poles both old and new, indigenous art, and a lovely museum, the U’mista Cultural Centre. With a focus on preserving the history and culture of the Kwakwa̱ka̱ʼwakw, there was a collection of the creation stories, art, textiles, and even a large collection (no photos allowed) of Potlatch dance masks.

While Alert Bay was between the 50s-70s a booming fishing and marine industry town with, apparently, more than enough liquor, gambling, and other vices to go around, these days it’s a quiet community with ferry service to Port McNeill and lots of indigenous art.

Continue reading →

Heading through Johnstone Strait

After several days in Campbell River getting some provisioning done and receiving a few packages in the mail, it was finally time to head north, through Discovery Passage, through the Seymour Narrows, and into the Johnstone Strait. Campbell River is the last large town we’ll see for a while. From here, it’s just small towns and wilderness.

Timing Seymour Narrows is not particularly difficult: the current tables are accurate, and we just had to go through around slack tide. Due to the timing, we were going to have to fight a little bit of current in Discovery Passage once through the Narrows, but getting through was easy, especially with several knots of current carrying us through. Slack tide the day we went (Friday the 13th) was at 1:11pm, and we ended up going through around 12:30.

Continue reading →

Early June in Desolation Sound

1 Comment

Heading back towards Desolation Sound, we stayed one night in Cortes Bay before heading onto Refuge Cove on Friday morning, the second-to-last day of May. In Refuge Cove, since there was nobody else anchored, we were able to take the one spot way in the back of the bay near the creek leading to Refuge Lagoon.

Refuge Cove is really, really pretty, but there isn’t a lot of anchoring room; much of the larger bay is pretty deep, and the area near the General Store (and the associated docks) has mooring balls taking up room not taken up by the docks, which also appear to have had a recent expansion added. As we were there at the end of May, the General Store hadn’t even started their high-season hours yet and were open for only a few hours Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, but we stopped in and I picked up a few lures for jigging bottom fish, since the area seemed like a good place to fish from the dinghy. On the short trip from Cortes Bay to Refuge Cove we’d attempted to troll for salmon with no success, but we’ll keep trying on days where we aren’t in a hurry and can move at the nice slow 2.5-3.5 knot speed we’d need to troll properly with the flasher and spoon rig.

Continue reading →

Heading North from Nanaimo: Comox and Desolation Sound

1 Comment

On Monday the 19th, we headed north from Nanaimo, intending to be in Campbell River on Tuesday, stopping for the night in Ford Cove on Hornby Island. This was easily our most uncomfortable passage yet–we were able to sail most of the way, with 15-20 knots of wind on our starboard quarter, but while we were able to sail, the motion of the waves in the Strait of Georgia hitting us in the same starboard quarter made for a very uncomfortable ride. I got mildly nauseous, and my partner got a bit worse than that, feeling fairly seasick for the first two hours.

Thankfully, Ford Cove gave us good protection from the wind and waves overnight and we slept well, and the next day was as calm as could be, a welcome relief from the previous day. However, we’d been having issues with the furling main getting stuck trying to unfurl, so while we motored north (thinking we’d get to Campbell River), I made some calls until I found a rigger that could help us out; the rigger (Blanchard Rigging) was based out of Comox and said they could come see us that afternoon if we just went directly to the Comox Valley Harbour Authority docks, so we did.

Continue reading →

Two lazy weeks in the Gulf Islands

1 Comment

After spending a few days at Sucia, we headed over to Sydney, BC to check into Canada. Clearing in was very easy and quick, and done over the phone once we were at the customs dock. From there, we headed up to Van Isle Marina on the north end of Sydney for the night to take care of getting a few groceries ashore.

From Van Isle Marina, we headed up to Ganges Harbour, Saltspring Island and spent several days enjoying life at anchor and going into town. The Saturday Farmer’s Market was especially good, as was True Love Pizza and Cassette Dive Bar.

Continue reading →