The early summer of 2023 saw us sailing north from BC’s Gulf islands via a familiar route: Herring Bay, then through Dodd Narrows to Nanaimo, and across the Salish Sea to the BC mainland at Pender Harbour.
We spent a sunny day exploring the coastline near Pender, then worked north again, this time to Ballet Bay; often crowded in high summer, we had the place to ourselves. It’s named after a Canadian ballerina who was something of a star in the 1940s: Audree Ismailoff, who danced under the name Anna Istomina. Her parents once owned a cottage on the foreshore here.
Taking advantage of a southeaster to advance, we had a good day’s sail as far as Cortes Bay, on Cortes island. Here misfortune struck and we once again faced a problem we had experienced last summer but which we thought thought was fixed. Our strongly reinforced stainless steel High-Rise exhaust – a custom design feature necessitated by the relatively high placement of our water trap/muffler – fractured. The immediate effects of such a fracture are (a) odourless but potentially fatal carbon monoxide pouring into the engine compartment and (b) exhaust cooling water is no longer pumped overboard, but accumulates first in the muffler and risks backing up into the engine. Following a similar experience last summer, we had a spare on board, so we sailed back to the nearest point of civilisation – Lund – and had yet another re-weld done.
This development led us to curtail long-range cruising for the summer. We decided instead to spend time in waters that we normally bypass because they are too crowded at the height of summer.
On a spectacularly sunny afternoon we sailed into Desolation Sound and made first for popular Prideaux Haven; it often hosts fifty or more vessels in July and August but there were only four or five in at this time. We spent a couple of days hiking in the nearby forests. Then we had a short sail across the Sound to Roscoe Bay, accessed over a shallow shelf that almost dries out at low tide. There’s a short walk from the head of the bay to a freshwater lake, where we spent two afternoons swimming.
We meandered slowly north, stopping for a night at another Provincial Park – Walsh Cove – where we caught up with John and Diane, friends from the Saltspring Island Sailing Club, and rowed for a look at the old Indian petroglyphs on the rock wall at the head of the bay. From here we doubled back south, circumnavigating East Redonda island, with spectacular Mount Denman always over our shoulder.
At Tenedos Bay, mink, harbour seals and a variety of ducks entertained us before we headed for an old favourite of ours that remains empty and quiet, even at the height of the cruising season: Theodosia inlet. There are long walks to be had here on overgrown logging roads, and for the first time we saw elk grazing in the meadows at the head of the inlet.
There were a few hot, lazy days in Von Donop Inlet on Cortes Island, then we continued north once more to a quiet anchorage that is only tenable in stable weather: Frances Bay, last visited nearly 40 years ago. All day as we sailed, there were humpbacks performing; at night we could here them puffing close inshore.
From Hole-in-the-Wall Rapids we made for the Octopus Islands and Waiatt Bay: there were more hikes in the woods, and a long trek in the mountains to some lake swimming. We began our return voyage south through Surge Narrows, to Rebecca Spit, on Quadra Island. Leaving Rebecca at daybreak for the passage to Comox, we memorably passed – coming the other way – a pod of a dozen orcas.
Summer was well advanced by now, the anchorage at Newcastle island excessively crowded. On a windless night, a raft of two large sailboats somehow managed to drag through the rest of the fleet, giving everyone a sleepless time, so we weren’t sorry to be back home a few days later.
Later in the season, we ran Bosun Bird over to Sidney, where Ben Gartside and his team – the local specialists in our engine – pondered our exhaust problem long and hard. The solution (we hope) has been to install a new kind of water trap, which allows for a slightly more normal exhaust manifold to be installed. Our fingers are crossed for 2024…