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.
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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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Heading North from Nanaimo: Comox and Desolation Sound
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.
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Orca whales and some birds
We had a pleasant sail + motor from the Catalina meetup at Roche Harbor to Shallow Bay on the west side of Sucia Island on Sunday. Motored out of the bay, between San Juan Island and Spieden Island, then unfurled the sails for an easy, slow sail up towards President Channel, which separates Waldron Island and Orcas Island.
Not far out from the entrance to the channel, we spotted several whale watching boats and a few private boats all grouped up near the south tip of Waldron, Point Disney. Once my partner confirmed with her binoculars that she should see a dorsal fin, we immediately furled in the sails (the wind had just died anyway) and motored over to see what was going on.
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