Desolation Sound!!!

Hello and welcome back! Picking up where we left off.... we had just finished the Sunshine Coast and were just about to enter Desolation Sound. We were so excited to have finally made it there.... One small problem.... wildfire smoke. There wasn't more than a mile of visibility as we pulled into Desolation Sound.... pegged as one of the most beautiful places in Canada... Damn it!

Our travels. This blog post covers our travels from Lund to Desolation Sound.

That's ok, we entered the sound, hung a right and pulled into Malaspina Inlet and parked our boat- happy to have made it to Desolation Sound, but frustrated we couldn't see anything!
Our first night in Desolation Sound served us with a "learning opportunity" in anchoring... stern tying more specifically. Since Desolation Sound is a very popular destination for boaters, people need to anchor their boats in a way that can accommodate many other boats. When a boat has its anchor dropped, the boat can swing 360 degrees depending on the wind. If you have 150' of chain out that's a large circle where other boats can't anchor. The solution is the stern tie.

Stern ties are when you take a line from the back of your boat and tie it to something onshore.... elminating any swing and allowing for many more boats to enjoy the anchorage. While, we didn't have any close neighbors, we decided to try a stern tie (for practice and to be neighborly). It wasn't pretty or efficient, but we got the boat's stern tied off, and settled in for an evening of fishing and relaxing. All was well until 3AM when our anchor drag alarm goes off... Oh shit we are moving!

A bit of an explanation about this pic. This is a screenshot of our Anchorwatch app. The purple dots are the GPS location of Maya over time. You can see at the bottom we were parked for a good long while. The line immediately above that is us dragging approx 50 feet until we cast off our stern line and settled out where the green boat is on the pic. While we both woke from the noise of dragging anchor we are still very thankful to have this handy app!

Thankfully, we had no around us, which gave us some time to think through what to do. Why were we dragging? There was no wind..... The current! We were anchored in a channel where a lot of water runs through- and we were perpendicular to that current. We made the decision to tie a fender to the end of the stern line and cast it off... allowing the boat to be parallel to the current, and reducing the amount of pressure on the anchor. With no neighbors, this was totally acceptable. We went back to bed and waited until morning to fetch the stern line. Lesson learned... don't stern tie anywhere that's exposed to current! Valuable lesson where lost sleep was the only price.

Maya anchored in the Malaspina Inlet. This pic is after we drug anchor- you can see Maya is parallel with the heavy current that runs through there on tidal exchanges

After an exciting night we moved further into the inlet and anchored in Wooten Bay where we had the whole place to ourselves! At this point we had been in the smoke for about a week and were fed up with it. People go to Desolation Sound for the views and we couldn't see anything because of the smoke. We figured we should move north in hopes of finding a smoke free area. We made plans to leave in the morning.... until we woke up to a smokefree sky! It was like Christmas morning- seeing mountains and all the views and breathing nice clean air! We quickly scrapped our departure plans- we were staying in Desolation!

Maya anchored in Wooten Bay

Video highlights from our first days in Desolation Sound

Fully renewed from the lack of smoke we took off for Tenedos Bay where stern tying was mandatory. Apparently we learned some lessons from our first round because we stern tied without a hitch! There was added pressure this time as everyone in the anchorage was watching us perform the anchor drop/stern tie maneuver. Everyone was waiting for a show and we didn't supply anything exciting- that's a win in our book! We spent the day swimming, SUPing, and enjoying the views. Life is so much better without wildfire smoke!

Maya parked in Tenedos Bay

SUP selfie- Beautiful clear water

SUP selfie with Maya in the background- notice the stern tie!

Get that ball, Disco

Our last stop in Desolation Sound was an area called Prideaux Haven... more specifically Melanie Cove. This is an awesome area because it consists of a bunch of inlets and islands. It was an amazing area to SUP and swim around- crystal clear water and lots to see under the water. We also stumbled upon a trail at the head of the bay which knocked our socks off! Such lush forests.... I swear we were in Jurassic Park.

Crystal clear water!

Lots of islands and inlets to explore by SUP

Trailhead and dinghy landing

Typical

So much green!

Must have been a big storm!

Desolation Sound

Barnacles are sharp!

Video highlights from the second half of our Desolation Sound tour

We loved our time in Desolation, but it was time to get moving. Stay tuned as we venture North and further from civilization.

And as always, thank you for reading!

Oh, and one clarification from my last blog post. Concerning the massive fuel consumption of motor boats... the 500 gallons figure is for boat travelling in the 10+ knot range. We were surprised to learn that when driven at 5-7 knots, trawlers can see fuel consumption figures as low as a gallon an hour.... meaning their fuel economy is only a little bit worse than ours. Just wanted to clear that up. Thanks for reading- cheers!