Hello and welcome back! We continue our journey around
Vancouver Island on our 37’ sailboat. Let’s jump right back into it!
Our travel in during our time in the Broughtons
Distance Traveled in this post: 143.5 nautical miles
Distance Traveled from Trip Start: 487.4 nautical
miles
Time duration this blog post covers: 10 days
Amount of time motoring/sailing during this post: 34.65 hours
Amount of time motoring/sailing during this post: 34.65 hours
Total Amount of Fuel Used From Start of Trip: 51.5 gallons
In the last post, we had just finished travelling up
Johnstone Strait, using the ebb tide to our favor, breaking our single day
mileage record on Maya. That record travel day delivered us to the doorstep of
Broughtons, a large group of islands and channels on the north side of Canada’s
Inside Passage.
Fun fact: The Broughtons are named for William Broughton,
who was Captain Vancouver’s right hand man during his exploratory missions to
the area in the 1700’s. Captain Vancouver was the first to map the coastline of
British Columbia, and Broughton was second in command during that mission.
A drone view of Maya in Simoom Sound
The Broughtons are amazing!
On our boat trip last year, we had spent about a week
exploring the Broughtons, and had vowed to return! And here we were- back again!
Upon arriving in the Broughtons, we immediately brought the boat to Freshwater
Bay in Blackfish Sound, which was our favorite anchorage from last year’s boat
trip. When we were in Freshwater Bay, the September, before we witnessed a
wildlife extravaganza with whales, sea lions, dolphins, and good fishing. This
year was no exception: we saw whales, dolphins, and had good luck fishing with
the added bonus of having the whole anchorage to ourselves!
Timelapse of the boat at anchor in Freshwater Bay
Panorama of Freshwater Bay at Low Tide
We spent two nights in Freshwater Bay, enjoying the sight of
humpback whales in the distance. Their blowholes reminding us of their presence
even after the sun went down. After a nice stay we forced ourselves to hoist
the anchor and continue on- we had returned to the Broughtons to explore… not
stay put! So on we went!
For roughly the next 10 days we stayed at new anchorage every
night. Because the Broughtons are densely packed with channels, islands, and
coves that meant our travel days were short- most days has us traveling under
10 miles… a welcome break from previous week's 30-40 mile days.
Since we were able to spend less time traveling from
anchorage to anchorage, we were able to spend more time fishing, which the
Broughtons is well known for.
Jenny with a nice catch that turned into dinner
A nice cabazon that was also turned into dinner
I thought it might be interesting to go over our fishing
setup and how we go about fishing day to day. To start, we carry two crab
traps, a prawn trap, and two fishing poles (a 9’ trolling rod, and 7’ jigging
rod). A typical day fishing on Maya would start by us looking for a spot to
throw out the prawn trap. To find just the right spot we use Navionics, which is
smartphone based chartplotter type application. We look for areas of 200-300’
depth, which is where prawn typically live at and once a place has been
selected, we drive Maya to the drop site, and toss the prawn trap overboard.
Our trap has 250’ of floating line, attached to 100’ of leaded line, which is
attached to our floating marker buoy that sits on the surface of the water. We
use commercially bought prawn bait which is essentially ground up fish in
pellet form- $10 of bait typically lasts us at least 5 soaks.
Once the prawn trap is in the water we continue on to our
anchorage (which is generally within a mile or so of where we threw the prawn
trap overboard), stopping along the way to fish with our rods from Maya if we
found an area that like. We usually look for areas that have a lot depth
contours…. Pinnacles or areas that go from deep to shallow in a short amount of
distance have worked well for us.
Depth difference between crab and prawn traps
Eventually we would stop fishing and head to our anchorage
where we would usually continue to fish, either off of Maya or in our dinghy.
Once we landed a good sized fish we would fillet it and then put the carcass in
bait bag, then attach that inside a crab trap. Crab eat anything and everything
that’s on the ocean floor and they happen to love fish guts. For our crab pots,
we look for depths under 50’. And with those pots thrown overboard and soaking,
we kick back and relax for the evening!
In the morning, as we are leaving the anchorage, we pull our
crab traps, typically from Maya. With the crab pots up, we move Maya over to
the prawn trap. Then the real work begins. While crab pots are easy to pull up
by hand, the prawn trap is another story. We do not have a fancy electric pot
puller, which forces us to pull our traps by hand. And those prawn live in DEEP
water.
This year has seen a marginal improvement of our manual pot
pulling with the addition of a pulley, allowing us to pull down and lift the
pot towards the surface, saving our backs from the rigors of pulling straight
up from the ocean floor.
While all of this manual pulling is a lot of work, it has
been worth it for the amount of prawn we have hauled in. While in the
Broughtons, we pulled in hundreds of Spotted Prawn- over 300 prawn in one pot
pull while in Simoom Sound! That amount fed us for several days! For scale,
after cleaning, each prawn was about the size of a quarter. And, when you add
in the 6 or 7 crab we caught while in the Broughtons, we ate like royalty.
Nothing beats fresh seafood, and this was as fresh as it gets! Absolutely
delicious.
A very successful prawn pull in Simoom Sound!
Cleaning prawn
Tasty victory!
Pot full of Prawn about to be cooked
Dinner from the sea! We even used "sea beans" harvested from the shore
Fresh Dungeness Crab! Cleaned and ready to be cooked
So fishing, eating, and relaxing sums up our time in
Broughtons. There was not much exploring on shore to be done, as there were
bears (which we saw on shore!), and no trails to speak of. Despite the lack of
onshore exploring, we did spend one night at Sullivan Bay Marina, which is like
a little floating city block- each pier of the dock had a street name and
floating homes lined the length of the marina.
At all the marinas in the Broughtons there’s a tradition that
all boaters moored at the dock convene at the dockside Happy Hour. These events
are fun as the people you meet are always interesting and there’s lots to talk
about. Sullivan Bay was very unique and quaint, we were glad we got to check it
out. For reference, it cost us $45 USD to dock Maya there for the night. We
declined tie to shore power (we are loving our new batteries, btw!), which
saved us an additional $10 cost. While $45 is on the higher side of nightly
moorage cost, it was worth the price to have the experience at Sullivan Bay.
For additional reference, our nightly moorage at New Castle Island Park in
Nanaimo was $15.
Disco at Sullivan Bay Marina
We saw wild frickin' bears in the Broughtons!
At the end of about 10 days touring the Broughtons, with our
fuel tanks just about empty, we pointed the boat towards the area’s biggest
town, Port McNeill (pop. 2000). This would be our last chance to refuel and
reprovision before we made our bid at rounding Vancouver Island’s Northern Cape
and entering the rugged wilderness of the West Side.
That’s gonna do it for this blog post. As always, thank you
so much for stopping by and following our adventure. Stay tuned as we ready the
boat for our biggest challenge yet: Vancouver Island’s West Coast.
Coming back from a fishing mission
Happy hour- Queen Charlotte Strait off in the distance
Home for the night- lovely anchorage
Disco!
Morning view on a calm day in the Broughtons
