{"id":1271,"date":"2025-06-25T22:40:12","date_gmt":"2025-06-26T05:40:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wing-on-wing.com\/?p=1271"},"modified":"2025-06-25T22:40:12","modified_gmt":"2025-06-26T05:40:12","slug":"north-of-vancouver-island-cape-caution-pruth-bay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/wing-on-wing.com\/?p=1271","title":{"rendered":"North of Vancouver Island: Cape Caution & Pruth Bay"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Leaving Port McNeill, we staged up for our crossing from the north end of Vancouver Island, past Cape Caution, to the north coast and the Inside Passage, in a tiny cove labeled as Walker Cove on the Canadian charts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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There’s not much room in Walker Cove, and the entrance is even skinnier than the one we’d gone through to get into Gorge Harbour, but it is protected, peaceful, and right next to Gordon Channel, our path out of Queen Charlotte Strait to go north past Cape Caution. It’s also amazing in its raw beauty, and we were alone there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

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We left the next morning after a good nights’ sleep at 6:30am, hoping to ensure we’d get to our anchorage before evening, motoring out into Gordon Channel, and then sailing for the first few hours up past Pine Island and towards Cape Caution. After the wind died, we motored, but with some favorable current for most of the day and calm conditions, we made excellent time. There were<\/em> some of the largest waves we’ve ever encountered coming in off the open Pacific, but the period was so long that they were just big, gentle rollers. As best we could tell they were about 2 meters high.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We made such good time that by 1pm we were already entering Fitz Hugh Sound. Our planned anchorage was just a few miles away, but with how early in the day it was we both agreed that we should continue on what we’d planned for the next day, Pruth Bay, in front of the Hakai Institute<\/a>. This was one of those locations we saw in the cruising guide and daydreamed about getting to, and we were finally nearly there!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Are we ever glad we decided to continue on. Not long before making the turn into Kwakshua Channel towards Pruth Bay, we saw small groups of sea otters:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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…and a humpback whale:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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There were more boats than we expected in Pruth Bay, but we were able to find a good spot to anchor reasonably close to the Hakai Institute’s dock. A number of the boats anchored we recognized from the docks at Port McNeill as well. The Hakai Institute provides guest WiFi to the anchorage for boaters to be able to check the weather and social sites, but you’ve got to be careful with your data usage as it’s limited to 300MB per day, per device. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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There are some maintained trails between the Institute itself and a series of beaches on the west side of the island. Beautiful beaches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We stayed in Pruth Bay for 3 nights, going ashore to hike and see the beaches and going out to fish in the dinghy. I even pulled in two quillback rockfish that we fileted, vacuum packed, and added to our freezer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, we were north of Vancouver Island, and out in remote areas. It only gets more remote from here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Leaving Port McNeill, we staged up for our crossing from the north end of Vancouver Island, past Cape Caution, to the north coast and the Inside Passage, in a tiny cove labeled as Walker Cove on the Canadian charts. There’s not much room in Walker Cove, and the entrance is even skinnier than the one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1262,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12,3,7,46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-photography","category-sailing","category-travel","category-wildlife"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/wing-on-wing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/20250623-DJI_0004.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5jxM5-kv","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wing-on-wing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wing-on-wing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wing-on-wing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wing-on-wing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wing-on-wing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1271"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/wing-on-wing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1271\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1275,"href":"http:\/\/wing-on-wing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1271\/revisions\/1275"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wing-on-wing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wing-on-wing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wing-on-wing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wing-on-wing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}