Sailing Desolation Sound and the Discovery Islands
I last left you anchored in Comox bay, where I accidentally lied and said that my next destination was Campbell River.
I slept pretty well that night in spite of the buzzing. Due to some kind of acoustic resonance in the hull / the bulkhead / possibly part of the rigging of my boat, sometimes distant boats will create a strong vibration on the starboard side of the bulkhead near where my head rests at night. At least, I think that’s what causes it [edit: I now believe it originates in my rigging when a certain breeze hits it, hopefully now solved with a bungee cord]. It fades in and out, sometimes becoming obnoxiously loud and rattly. Fortunately it doesn’t happen most nights.
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Oct. 5: First light and I was up and getting ready, starting my motor, pulling up the anchor. Sunrise, I was away.
I got into the strait and felt some wind so I put up my mainsail and genoa. I had to go directly upwind so I started on a port tack and looking at my track on the map I could already tell that with the current being slightly against me as well, it was going to be another impossible challenge to sail to Campbell River… and I didn’t really feel like motoring for 6 hours either. So, I changed my destination to Blubber Bay on the north end of Texada Island, relaxing sails from close hauled to a close reach at a nice 5kts. Trying to learn the lesson of going where the wind allows rather than fighting it all the time.
The wind only lasted about an hour. I expected this and by now I was content to fire up the motor again and continue on my way. Except, reading more about Blubber Bay, it didn’t sound very appealing (active ferry terminal… ugly quarry… debris on the seafloor to snag your anchor) and I would have gotten there early in the day. So I once again changed my destination, to the Copeland Islands farther north.
Motoring burns fossil fuels and is loud. Not really why I got into sailing. But I guess it’s better to motor a functional boat on a calm, sunny day than it is to sail on a stormy, miserable day with broken gear.
The mountains were getting closer and more dramatic and I was feeling increasingly excited to explore their misty mysteries. Misteries!
The funny thing is that I saw some sailing guide online telling boaters NOT to stop at Copeland Islands, there is NO place to anchor, and just because you see other people doing it does NOT mean they know what they are doing. Bossy, bossy. Not sure why I should take YOUR word for it when other boats are doing it just fine and my own guide that’s served me perfectly well so far shows multiple possible anchorages.
So I ended up in this nice little passage between two islands. Went ashore for a little bit. Jojo hasn’t gotten much love lately so here are some pics.
Went outside to look around one last time before bed and caught the moon rising.
Slept great, it was perfectly calm and peaceful all night.
Oct. 6: Woke up around 7:20 and took my time getting ready. I was on my way by 8:45 and it was the start of an EPIC day! This ended up being one of those days you wouldn’t mind living on repeat if you had to choose one!
This National Geographic cruise ship passed me early in the morning, and eventually I watched it round the last corner into Desolation Sound, wondering what views the passengers were absorbing from there.
Then I rounded it for myself and was stoked to finally be getting close to where the mountains meet the sea. Nat Geo was far ahead by now.
Off to the right was a mistery to explore. An inlet that has a lot of nice anchorages; none that I would use tonight as I wanted to cover more ground (water?) that day, but still something I wanted to check out. I hoped that the fog would have better visibility inside of it than it appeared from outside.
As soon as I seemed to be reaching the edge of the fog, it would retreat in front of me. This continued for some hundreds of meters and then suddenly it all melted away, revealing the way into the inlet. I never actually lost visibility.
I explored it for a while and turned around once I was content. I had just about made it back out to the main channel when a bunch of splashing caught my attention; some frenzied sea lions diving for fish I assumed, and then – was it? Yes! A whale tail sticking out of the water too! So I cut my engine and got out my binocs and camera.
Clearly not an orca, and I’m not positive if it was a humpback but that’s what I’m going with for now. Mostly I saw its tail but it did also come up for air a few times, letting out a bugle-sounding breath.
Some more frenzied sea lions were on the hunt closer to me, and the seagulls realized there must be an absolute fish-eating bonanza going on and came to join the excitement.
Two concerned sea lions came to give me a closer look.
I lost track of the whale, started to motor away, heard it one more time on the other side of the inlet, stopped to look for it again, but no luck. So I continued on to my next destination: Tenedos Bay.
Ah, so that’s where Nat Geo went.
And what’s this? Dozens of tourist passengers being shuttled on smaller boats from the cruise ship, exactly to the one beach I was headed for, to do the exact hike that was on my agenda? I guess I can’t expect to have all the sights to myself!
I anchored and rowed ashore, chatting with an employee of the cruise ship about Jojo since he was looking at getting the same type of dinghy. All the employees were really nice actually.
I call it a hike, but it was more like a 10 minute walk (plus the time stuck behind tourists and their nature guide) to get to Unwin lake, which was advertised as a nice warm lake to swim in. I wasn’t sure how warm it could really be in October… but even as a cold water wimp, I had no problem going for a nice skinny dip and I didn’t have to rush getting out either. I did make it out just in time to get my clothes on before another hiking tour group walked by.
Literally reFRESHing to once again remove the salt in some lake water…
Well, that was nice, but I still had some more hours of daylight and I wanted to spend the night at Roscoe Bay which had been recommended by someone on Reddit. So I got back to my boat, pulled anchor again, and motored for about an hour. The autopilot pointing me right where I needed to go, Boatato gliding over the glassy water, me sitting up on the bow, with a speaker on each side for full stereo effect, singing along to some Agalloch and enjoying the majestic sunny views with not a soul in sight.
I turned into Roscoe Bay and navigated the sand bar at the entrance, which does not permit entrance at low tide. I knew this was a popular bay so I was surprised to see that I literally had it all to myself (and would keep it to myself for the duration of my stay). Myself, that is, plus the hundreds of thousands of moon jellies who live here.
After anchoring I once again rowed Jojo to shore. At first I landed at the wrong trailhead, but found a sign board where someone had posted an entire thesis about the biology of moon jellies, which I found completely charming.
Then I found the one I was looking for – another 5 minute “hike” to Black Lake, which was lovely, but not very photographable from where I was due to the angle of the sun, and a little colder than Unwin.
Back at the boat I made dinner. Due to the shortening days and the lower sun angle, my solar panel hasn’t been able to keep up with demand, so I’m trying to eat through all my refrigerated food so I can shut off my fridge to save power. Tonight it was a block of tofu with half a red pepper and a zucchini… and then some chocolate granola and a Larabar.
I didn’t have service so I worked a lot on my photos and videos, and on this writeup. Couldn’t get to sleep until after 3am actually. Was it the double dose of Cafe Bustelo that morning? Nearly 20 hours later…?? Couldn’t be. Was it just my brain insisting that I record this amazing day in more detail while it was still fresh in my mind, before it would let me sleep? Hopefully that’s the case so I can get some rest now!
Oct. 7: After less than 4 hours of sleep, I woke up feeling grumpy and anxious, but at least there was a fantastic sunrise.
Man, honestly I just wasn’t feeling it today. What a swing from the day before. It was overcast and gray, too cold, the sound of the outboard was grating on me, and there was a lot of floating wood debris in the water that I had to constantly dodge so it wasn’t relaxing. It’s too bad because the landscape was grand with all the mountains around. I took a lot of photos but in editing I realized they’re all just kind of washed out and grim, like my soul apparently.
I did catch a glimpse of possibly another humpback whale. That’s always nice.
I had planned to take a detour to check out Toba Inlet, which is basically a dead end with no place to anchor but looks like it’s not visited often for that reason, and pretty scenic. But with my current mood the thought of motoring another 3+ hours out of my way just to plunge further into this grayness…
…when instead I could turn the other way and make progress towards a resting place and a chance of color…
…made it an easy choice to skip Toba Inlet. Someday, though!
Of course, not long after I looked back at Toba and it was clearing up, but my intuition was telling me I just needed to get to the nearest anchorage and rest for the day. Try to get some more sleep.
So, I motored to Gorges Islands marine park, having nearly encircled East Redonda Island, where I spent another solitary night in a beautiful place.
After failing to nap I thought maybe I should stretch my legs before sunset, so I rowed ashore and brought my DSLR.
So many monotonous gray pictures of water, sky, trees… I thought y’all might want a palate cleanser and maybe a few colors you don’t normally see on my blog.
With more daylight and warmer temps, there would be some really neat places to swim here.
I have 2 lenses for the Pentax K-5 that I bought in 2011 or so. One is a Sigma DC 18-125mm zoom lens, which is mostly what I’m using while sailing so I can quickly go from wide angle landscape shots to zooming in on whales. It gets the job done, but the image quality always feels blurry and sterile to me.
I also have a Pentax 50mm macro prime lens that I just adore. When I got it back in 2013 I was blown away by how close it could shoot, how crisp the images were, and how artistic the blur looks. It’s still a joy to use, every time. It’s not a real convenient focal length for travel story-telling photography, otherwise I’d use it all the time. The quality is a bit reduced for efficient web viewing, here.
Finally I went to bed and had a full night’s rest. It was here that I heard the humming in my boat again at night and realized it couldn’t possibly be from a boat passing by, so I tried the bungee cord on the standing rigging and it stopped.
Oct. 8: I had roughly 24nm to go today to get to Heriot Bay, Quadra Island. I wanted to get there by 3pm so I could fill up on fuel. I left at around 8am and it was right at high tide, which was perfect because I rode the falling tide all the way out to my destination, providing about 1 free knot of speed.
Finally, for the first time in days, the wind found me.
Here I saw a pod of 3-4 orca whales, but they quickly went below the surface and I never saw them again. Whales 3 days in a row!
I sailed most of the last few miles to Heriot Bay, which immediately felt like an interesting place, being so remote and relaxed, and seemingly a tight-knit community.
I got there at about 1:30 so I was able to fill up on gas and settle in for the night. 2 nights actually, as it’s now the 9th and I’ve spent most of the day creating this blog post. I met a friendly guy name Tom who has a boat here and chatted with him for a while. He offered to bring me some produce from his garden. He came back today with this amazing harvest. Thanks, dude!
So… what’s my next move? I’m not being rhetorical, it’s a real question, at least one that I’m asking myself. What should I do next? I’m not sure.
I do feel like it’s probably time to be looking for a place to settle down for the winter. I’ve gotten some nice weather into October which is pretty cool, and I’ll enjoy that while it lasts, but I don’t really want to get caught somewhere inhospitable for 2 weeks of crazy storms while I’m still unsure of where I’m landing in Canada. I’ll also need to return to PT and sort out my things there.
Honestly, I might ask if I can stay here at the marina on Quadra Island. It seems like a cool place and would probably make for an interesting winter. It does rain a lot and it would get cold and I’m sure I’d be tired of being in my tiny boat. Maybe I’d find a tiny house or some cozy cheap place to rent, and hopefully some work.
I’m also still thinking about Salt Spring Island. I have put out some feelers there and got a couple of potential situations in my sights. It would be a little warmer, dryer, more social, and more convenient.
Sometime before noon tomorrow I’ll choose my next destination — likely to the south. Until then, maybe I’ll have a couple pints at the pub and see if I can chat with some more locals.
As always, thanks for following along and I hope you enjoyed the story.
***BONUS CONTENT***
Seagulls like to hang out on floating logs. Makes sense I guess, a handy resting point on the water to look for food.
Here is a new series: SURFBIRDS.
***BONUS BONUS CONTENT***
When I was in Comox I went to the Dollarama and got some acrylic paints. The cabin lights in my boat are ungodly bright, so I painted them to create a more ambient vibe.
Those are beautiful pictures. Thank you for sharing your travel adventures. It seems so peaceful and idyllic.