From Alert Bay we had a very nice downwind sail 6nm over to Port McNeill, where we needed to top off our provisions, our diesel, and propane. We ended up staying at the North Island Marina, which is more of a fuel dock with a marina attached to it than the other way around: in the afternoons they stretch the super-long diesel fill hoses down the docks to fuel up docked boats so they don’t need to go over to the actual fuel dock, and they filled our propane tanks for us as well. Further south than this (including Campbell River!) I couldn’t find any place to get propane refilled, only exchanged, and since we’ve got 10lb tanks rather than the more standard 20lb tanks, exchanges won’t work for us. I’d banked on refills being the more common thing as we got further north into more remote areas, and that assumption turned out to be correct.
Continue readingMonth: June 2025
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.
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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.
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Early June in Desolation Sound
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.
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