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.