Back in Desolation and Making Our Way Back South

Hello and welcome back to our journey through British Columbia! Previously, we had stopped in Squirrel Cove after successfully navigating several rapids in the Inside Passage. We pick up our story just after leaving Squirrel Cove.

Video highlights from Desolation Sound, Powell River, and Pender Harbor

Travel stats for travel covered in this blogpost:
Distance: 96.7 Nautical Miles
Time spent traveling: Approx 26.2 hours
Duration: 6 days

The red line indicates the our travel covered in this blog post

Google Map Locations (click to view on google maps):

Tenedoes Bay

Powell River

Ballet Bay

Pender Harbour

Nanaimo

From Squirrel Cove we decided to go back into the Desolation Marine Park to see what it was like this time of year. Based on the last few weeks of cruising we figured it would be deserted and that was indeed the case. We cruised into Tenedos Bay (same bay we anchored in on our way North).  We found a spot between an island and shore. The way the island was situated, we needed to run a stern line in order to not swing into rocks and a nearby shallow area. We probably would have been accosted anchoring like this in the summer as it took up lots of space, but we were Fall boating and had the whole place to ourselves! We had a fun evening drinking wine and trying to take night time photos of the boat. The photos didn't really turn out, but the wine tasted great.

On our way back into Desolation Sound

The following morning we left our anchorage under heavy fog. We had only experienced fog a few times on this trip so far, but we had already come to learn that we hate traveling in fog. When fog totally surrounds the boat, we don't have any point of reference to drive the boat from. That means that it's almost impossible to drive the boat in a straight line towards the destination. The chartplotter and compass help a bit, but we haven't found a good way to travel in fog yet. How they did it back in the time before chartplotters is a mystery to me (and incredible that they did it). The one good thing about fog is that it makes for some cool pics!

Maya at anchor with the fog rolling in

Fog filling up Tenedoes Bay

Leaving the anchorage under heavy fog

Thankfully the fog only lasted for about an hour and half before it burned off. What we were left with was a nice sunny trip towards Powell River, where we were planning on spending the night at the dock and meeting up with boater friends, Rheal and Julie, who we had met back in Sidney Bay. They live in an awesome house on a hill right above the marina. Happy hour and catching up were in order and that's what we did. Rheal and Julie, being the fantastic hosts that they are, let us do laundry at their house- what super hosts! They live right on the water and the view from Powell River is stunning- west facing over the Straight of Georgia.

Leaving the fog

Glad to be done with the fog!

Onwards to Powell River

The view from our friends' house. Great night!

We had a fantastic evening catching up with them- as if that wasn't enough they insisted that they drive us to the grocery store the following morning (we discovered that the store is NOT close to the water so they really helped us out!).
Power River was a great stop, thanks to the great hosts we had. It's funny we only knew Rheal and Julie for 2 days at Sidney Spit, but seeing them again in Powell River felt like we were old friends. I suppose that's a neat facet of boating- we're all out here because of the water, which gives us that common thread to bond over.

While in Powell River we checked the weather and saw winds and rain in the forecast. Wanting to make some miles south, we headed out and motored to our next anchorage, Pender Harbor. We had stayed at Pender Harbor on our way north, so it was nice to be familiar with the anchorage. Naturally, we had the entire anchorage to ourselves which was nice because we wanted to let out extra anchor chain for the winds expected overnight.

And we are so thankful we had that extra chain out because that night we experienced the highest winds of the trip. Holy S#$% did it blow! The storm was most intense in the wee hours of the morning, with winds gusting to 35-40 knots. Since we were in a cove, we were in a "wind eddie" so the boat was being blown back and forth. We were up several times that night checking on things, usually when a big wind gust would come through and shake the whole boat. Despite the chaos going on outside the boat, we did manage to sleep. We credit our ability to sleep to a handy phone app that we have. We have an "anchor watch" program that will tell us if Maya is out of the "anchor radius"... basically an alarm goes off if the boat drags anchor. The app also tracks where we have been and displays that in a map- allowing us to see what has been going on. It's so nice to wake up from a huge gust of wind and check our GPS location on the phone... saving us from getting out of bed and seeing if we were dragging anchor.


So we made it through the stormiest night of the trip, but the weather was forecasted to be rough off and on the next few days. We were headed across the Straight of Georgia to Naniamo, but were unsure of the sea conditions. The only way to check was to literally drive the boat out there so that's what we did. Somewhat surprised that the conditions were rather calm, we continued across and knocked out the 18 mile open water crossing. The last time we crossed the Straight of Georgia, the wind was howling and it was comfortable.... this crossing was rather boring, which is more than ok! After a long slog we had made it back to Nanaimo!

Rainbow from New Castle Island just outside Naniamo

Big city lights of Naniamo- we really liked Naniamo

Maya at the dock at New Castle Island