Saturday, August 17, 2019

The Famed Princess Louisa Inlet and Exploring Canada's Beaches



Hello and welcome back to another chapter of our 2019 Canadian Sailing Expedition! In the last post we had just crossed the Strait of Georgia and were headed up to Princess Louisa Inlet. In this post we take you to the famed inlet and continue our voyage North.
We also have a new video for this post, however this video is a trailer for our youtube channel that we are trying to grow. If you have a youtube account we would so appreciate ya hitting the subscribe button.... plus then you will never miss a video that we put out!

Cruising Maya's new YouTube Trailer! 


The following blog post covers travel indicated in red

Distance Traveled in this post: 143.6 nautical miles
Total Trip Distance so far: 254 nautical miles
Days this blog post covers: 5 Days
Hours Spent Travelling: 24.3 hours
Total Amount of Fuel Used From Start of Trip: 21 Gallons Diesel



We bid our farewell to Green Bay, which was a lovely anchorage, and we made our way to Princess Louisa, arriving after a long day motoring through a deep channel surrounded by towering mountains. Upon arriving, not even the rain could dampen our spirits for Princess Louisa lived up to the hype! My goodness! The views were spectacular- sheer cliff walls rising thousands of feet up, water falls everywhere you looked, and a HUGE waterfall at the head of the bay. The whole inlet looked straight out of Jurassic Park.... even the hills seems to smolder with the low lying clouds- giving it a prehistoric look. We stayed for two nights at the public dock, enjoying the sound of the waterfall from our boat. It rained (super-duper hard) the whole time we were there, but it was a really awesome place and definitely worth the trek up. For a spell, we even had the entire dock to ourselves, which, to my understanding, is a rare thing.

Traveling to Princess Louisa

Approaching the dock


Maya at the Princess Louisa Dock

Maya with Chatterbox Falls. Lots more waterfalls on the cliff wall



After two nights at the dock, we headed out of the inlet, and back towards the Strait of Georgia, where we could continue our journey North. Princess Louisa was an amazing stop, but it was a side attraction for this trip (how lucky are we?!). Our main goal is going North and rounding Vancouver Island. 

As we motored away from the Coastal Mountains where Princess Louisa lives, the rain began to lighten, and eventually turned to sun! Oh glorious sun! We will never take you for granted ever again! We ended up anchoring in Blind Bay on Hardy Island, after a long day motoring.  We had anchored in Blind Bay the year before and it was fun to be back in a place we knew and could reminisce about. Looking back, we were clueless on that first big trip! It felt really great to really get a gauge on how much we’ve learned in just a year.

Here we are anchored in Blind Bay.


After a nice calm evening, we hoisted the anchor and continued motoring our way North, hugging the western side of mainland Canada. We were destined for Middlenatch Island (insert map link), which resides smack-dab-in-the-middle of the Strait of Georgia. But before we made it to MIddlenatch we decided to stop at Savory Island, which is famed for its beach! My goodness! It felt like we were on a tropical beach, with its white sand beaches and warm shallow waters. We had a ton of fun hiking around and throwing the Frisbee around. Disco really enjoyed that stop.

Here’s where’ Middlenatch resides.

Great beach

Family day at the beach

Disco and her prized possession





While we enjoyed our time stretching our legs and playing frisbee as we explored the very nice beaches of Savory Island, we decided to not anchor there for the evening as there was a lot of boat traffic (causing a lot of wake) and the anchorage was very exposed to wind and weather. So after a nice mission to shore we hoisted the anchor and motored a few extra miles to Middlenatch Island, enjoying the trip’s first sight of whales while enroute! Humpback whales! They were literally blocking the entrance to our anchorage.... sadly we don't have any photos (it was all happening so fast!) but it was so cool seeing whales and we hope that's a sign of things to come. We spent a nice evening there listening to the thousands of birds who call the island home (Middlenatch island is a bird sanctuary) and left early the next morning before the tide caused our anchorage to vanish.

SUP mission to Middlenatch Island. Maya in the background.


Oh Disco!

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