Cruising Maya: Headed North and Entering the Inside Passage

Welcome back! On the last post we left you just as we were leaving Desolation Sound. The Broughtons are the next renowned cruising destination! The Broughtons sit on the northern end of Vancouver Island, approx 100 miles by boat from Desolation Sound. In between Desolation and the Broughtons are a series of channels, mountains, and islands that make up the Inside Passage.

In this post we will cover our travels from Desolation Sound to the Blind Channel... approximately 1/3 of the way to the Broughtons.

Zoomed out map of our travels covered in this blog post

Zoomed in map of our travels covered in this blog post

Sad to be leaving Desolation, but excited at the prospect of exploring more, we set out towards the Broughtons and into the Inside Passage!

Our first stop was Cortes Island, which had several good anchorages to choose from (always nice to have options!). We stopped in Cortes Bay based on a tip from a fellow cruiser, but decided to pass and push on a littler further to cover more ground.

We opted for Gorge Harbor. As the name implies, there's a gorge! And you sail through it to get to the harbor. It was pretty neat cruising past the vertical walls. Also, we traversed the gorge on a rising tide and you could see how much water was going in. It still amazes me how much water moves with the tides- even into a small bay there is an incredible amount of water being pushed around. Gorge Harbor is well protected from weather, but it's deep. We anchored in our deepest water yet- 70 feet at high tide. And with 15 knots of wind predicted overnight we threw out all of our new chain (220'). The night's forecast held true and so did our anchor. Again, we are so happy to have made the investment in new chain.

Great band and a lovely evening at Gorge Harbor

Leaving Gorge Harbor

About the time of dropping the hook it was about 5PM and we had a million things to take care of... trash, laundry, run, shower. Ahhhh! It was the first civilizaion we had seen in about a week and there was much to do and so little time! We mobilized and organized, emptying our composting toilet, making a trash run, laundry run, and an actual run! Cortes Island was nice for runners- people still drove fast, but there was basically no traffic. Where are all these people driving in such a hurry?!

Freshly laundered, the next day we set out for Quadra Island. With no particular rush to get to our anchorage and very calm conditions, we threw the trolling line out, hoping for salmon. We have been told that 2.5-3 knots is a good speed for trolling salmon, so we lowered the engine RPMs and putted along.... sadly no salmon, but not for lack of effort! We tried hard damnit!

After failing at fishing, but suceeding getting to our destination, we tried anchoring at Rebecca Spit, but the water depths around the anchorage dropped significantly and erractly. There were a ton of other boats there so after trying to drop the hook once, and failing to set it properly, we pulled up the anchor and made the quick motor over to Heriot Bay.

Some video highlights!

Working the sheets on the mast

Trolling for salmon

Jenny waiting for the salmon to bite

Good lookin' pup

Fishing on our way to Quadra Island

Another photo op!

We found a little spot to anchor in Heriot Bay and rested before our next gate.... Surge Narrows and Beasley Pass. This would be our second rapid of the trip. Timing is everything with rapids- you need to show up right at slack tide to avoid the fast current and eddies created by tidal water being squeezed through the narrow passes! We showed up early, burning a little bit of time sailing over to a waterfront general store... you heard that right... a general store you pull your boat up to! Sadly, we didn't have time to stop, but it looked really neat.

Sunset in Heriot Bay

Waterfront general store!!

When slack tide arrived, we traversed the narrows safely and sped (relative term for a sailboat) to the Octopus Islands. At this point there were significantly less people (on the water and on shore), with most all boats we encountered heading south.

This book has tide levels, times, and max current for various channels and bays in the Pacific Northwest. This is an invaluable resource that we use all the time.

More resources for trip planning. We use Waggoner's Guidebook and Navionics on the phone for planning purposes. Timing tides is critical so having multiple sources of information is very important!

Typical morning- me working on some blog stuff and Jenny route planning.... and Disco being a bum.

Upon arriving to the Octopus Islands, we anchored in Wiatt Bay. The anchorage was a stark contrast to our previous ones in that we didnt have to worry about neighbors. Major score! The bay was HUGE and there were only two other boats there- that means a worry-free night's sleep! We noticed there was a significantly fewer boats after surge narrows. It was becoming quite apparent that we were moving further from civilization.

After a good night's rest, we awoke very early to start making our way to Blind Channel. We had to leave in the dark in order to time our arrival at Upper and Lower Rapids. Again, more rapids meant we needed to pass through them at specific times. The early morning wake up call was worth the effort as both sets of rapids were a non-issue.

While we have been anchoring out as much as possible, at this point we could not afford to go any longer without a visit to a dock, due to the fact we were low on water. Our 75 gallons aboard Maya lasts us approx 10 days. We knew we were close to empty as we pulled into Blind Channel Resort, but we had no idea we were empty! Our tanks went dry within an hour of landing at the dock.... we cut that close (don't worry we have spare drinking water aboard). Blind Channel Resort is a small marina (basically some docks) that cater to higher end boats. We were unaware of that, and were shocked when the bill for one night's moorage was $88! Yikes! We had to drop off trash too, which they charge $2/pound! While Blind Channel was a bit more than we wanted to pay, we were relieved to have a full tank of water, no garbage, and restocked on some groceries. An additional bonus was that we got to stretch our legs on a run of the surrounding forest. Another fun fact is that the current around Blind Channel that the resort produces their own power with a turbine that sits in the water. The fast moving current spins the turbine which produces the power. In the video you can see a big power boat being tossed around by the heavy current.... ya shoulda waited for slack tide, buddy!

That about does it for this blog post. Stay tuned for our next blog post where we take a slight detour that totally pays off and we tackle our last and most infamous Gate.... Johnstone Straight.

As always, thank you so much for stopping by and reading and please ask questions or comment on the little box below. We would love to hear from you.