Living off the Sea in the Broughtons! Lots of pics!

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

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

Campbell River and the Infamous Seymour Narrows

Hello and welcome back to our circumnavigation of Vancouver Island in our 37' sailboat!

The following blog post covers travel indicated in red. Also, here's some travel stats for the nerds out there!

Distance Traveled in this post: 83.5 nautical miles

Distance Traveled From Trip Start: 343.9 nautical miles

Time duration this blog post covers: 4 days

Amount of time motoring/sailing during this post: 13.25 hours

Total Amount of Fuel Used From Start of Trip: 36 gallons

In the last post we were anchored on Middlenatch Island, amidst thousands of birds who call the island home. We had deliberately chosen Middlenatch for its proximity to Campbell River, which is pegged as the "salmon capital of the world". Campbell River lives on a major salmon migration route- when the salmon runs come from the Pacific, they typically travel down through the Inside Passage, taking Johnstone Strait through Seymour Narrows and they swim right past Campbell River towards their spawning grounds in the mountains of the Canada and Washington.

It's not every day you are in the SALMON CAPITAL OF THE WORLD, so we seized the opportunity to troll for salmon on our way to Campbell River. I would love nothing more than to post a picture of us triumphantly holding a great big salmon, but unfortunately we didn't catch anything :-( There were about 30 other boats out trolling where we were, so I assume the fish were there, so it must have been operator error. Oh well!  Maybe next time.

Once we arrived in Campbell River, we decided to get a marina dock spot which allowed us to better explore the town. Our timing couldn't have been better as we had arrived on Canada Day, which is Canada's equivalent to the 4th of July. There was a big festival just steps from the marina and it seemed like the whole town had shown up (all wearing red and white- way to be patriotic, Canada!). We explored the festival and then got to enjoy an amazing fireworks show from the marina- that was so great and totally unexpected! Love stuff like that. We really enjoyed our time in Campbell River and would recommend stopping in if you are in the area.

Celebrating Canada Day in Campbell River

Disco was also wearing her finest Canadian Outfit for the celebration

Since this was our first proper marina stop on our trip, we took advantage of it- filling up our water tanks and emptying our trash…. Also taking a real hot shower, which was also a first on this trip.

So after one night in Campbell River we motored away from the dock, bound for our next major obstacle: Seymour Narrows, which was once the most “treacherous stretch of water in North America”.

Seymour Narrows is channel that experiences intense tidal swings, causing currents as high as 15 knots (17mph). For scale, our boat travels at 5 knots, sometimes maybe 6. There’s no way our boat could overpower the current. And with all that water and current, huge boils and whirlpools are form which can be dangerous for boats big and small.

For many years, Seymour Narrows was the most dangerous waterway in North America, sinking a number of ships and claiming the lives of 114 people. Thankfully, in the 1950’s a major project took place, where they set to remove a large rock in the middle of the channel, which was cause of many accidents.

Panorama of Seymour Narrows

Jenny with Seymour Narrows in the background

Now this sounds crazy, but for three years they dug underground tunnels out to the rock in the middle of the channel, packed it with explosives, then set it off, causing the largest non-nuclear explosion in history. MADNESS! We found this fascinating, old school video of the project.

Fascinating video showing how they blew up Ripple Rock

The explosion took care of the top 50 feet of the rock, allowing large ships (even cruise ships) to pass by, however, most all boats only go through the narrows at slack tide, when the direct of flow reverses, and there is a small window where there is no current.

Upon leaving the dock in Campbell River, several miles south of Seymour Narrows, we experienced those currents, having to fight them for several miles, before giving up and tucking into a side bay until the current went to slack. And once at slack tide, we motored several miles north, anchoring in a small bay near the entrance of Seymour Narrows. Thankfully this bay was only ½ mile from the narrows, which allowed us to precisely time our passage through Seymour with the slack tide. We were also thankful anchoring close as the slack tide was set for 5:30AM!

An added bonus of this anchorage was the fact that we could hike up to cliff overlooking the narrows. Just as we made it to the top of the cliff, the current was at its max so we got to see all the whirlpools and boils caused by all the moving water. What a sight! We saw crazy huge whirlpools and boils… yikes!

The following morning we got underway at 5AM and hit the narrows right at high tide slack. While you can go through the narrows at low or high tide slack, we chose high tide, because that allowed us to safely traverse the narrows and ride the ebb tide in the direction we were traveling. And it worked out just like! We absolutely crushed miles by using the ebb tide- we cruised almost all day at 8 knots, which is about 3 knots of tidal push. It was amazing to get all that extra speed from the tide- we covered 60 miles that day which is a record for us.

Great thing about boats is you can take naps in a bed while traveling! First Class all the way!

Unfortunately we will need to stop here…. Just as we are getting to the REALLY good stuff! Be sure to check back soon or subscribe for email updates so you don’t miss a post (you’ll get each blog post emailed to you as they are published).

In the next post we will flex our fishing muscles in an area called the Broughtons, which is a huge area of islands and channels. Thanks again for stopping by and see you soon! Cheers!

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! 

Click here to go to our YouTube Channel

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!

New post and video coming soon!

Hello everyone!
Sorry for the delay in getting another post out. Since the last post was published we have been cruising on the West Coast of Vancouver Island, where internet and cell service has been basically nonexistent.

We have the next blog post and video ready to go, we just need to find quality internet. Good news is we are nearing civilization and should be able to publish another post within a week or so.

Thank you for patience and check back soon for updates.

Cheers!

-Mac, Jenny, & Disco

The Start of Our Biggest Trip Yet!

Video highlights from this portion of our trip

Ahoy friends and family!
2019 brings us back to boating in Canada on our 37' sailboat, Maya! Our goal this summer is to circumnavigate Vancouver Island counterclockwise, traveling up the Inside Passage, rounding the top and then making our way down the West Coast. This route is considered a "classic PNW boat trip". 

Here is our proposed route for our 2019 Summer Sailing Expedition

While the Inside Passage is quite sheltered and welcoming to any level of boater, the West Coast is a different story. Vancouver Island’s West Coast is exposed to thousands of miles of open Pacific Ocean and when you add in the fact that it’s made up of mostly wilderness and far removed from modern conveniences, a much higher degree of skill and self-sufficiency is required.

And because of those reasons, we chose to do this trip. Never having sailed anywhere outside of the sheltered waters of WA and Canada, we want to feel what the open ocean feels like.... will we like it? Will we get seasick? These are questions that must be answered before we can confidently make a decision to sail to destinations outside of Washington and Canada. As far as self-sufficiency, we feel confident in our skills and our boat- Having spent the past 6 months studying all things boats at the marine technical school, I feel we have the skills required to address issues that may arise. Additionally, having spent the last year living aboard Maya, we understand her systems to a much higher degree and we are more comfortable and practiced at living aboard.

So there you have it. West Coast of Vancouver Island. A classic PNW boat trip. Let's do this!

And the first step in any good expedition is proper preparation! Speaking quite frankly, we were able to much better prepare for this trip compared to 2018’s trip. One such area of improvement was provisioning food for this trip. Last year, prior to leaving on our trip, we haphazardly went to Costco, bought some food, and off we went. We did not buy enough food last time, forcing us to purchase expensive food in Canada's Inside Passage.

This year was a stark difference as we started discussing food several weeks prior to leaving, preparing a list that included just about everything we would need.... with the exception of fresh produce, which we need to buy in Canada due to border crossing regulations.

Below is the the photo comparison between last year's and this year's food run. 

This year's food run

Last year's food run

One funny conversation between me and Jenny was how much granola to bring. We settled on 10 pounds, but initial estimates included 20 pounds! We won’t know how much we really needed until we are done with the trip but I will update everyone J

Food was only one such facet of planning and preparing. Prior to leaving we had a laundry list of items to get, things to take care of, things to put away in storage, etc etc. There was a flurry of activity prior to leaving, but we managed to get everything done. We have prepped as much as we could it's time to go!


On the morning of June 22, 2019, we threw off our docklines and headed West towards Canada! Immediately, we were greeted with fair winds all the way to Stuart Island, which was our last stop in the USA before checking into Canada. That day was one of the best sails we have ever had- it was an amazing way to start our trip.

Launch day!

Sails up on our way to Canada


View from our anchorage on Stuart Island. Canada in the far background.

The following morning we made the small crossing to Bedwell Harbour on Pender Island, British Columbia, checking in without even seeing a border agent... everything was done via telephone, taking no more than 20 minutes from the time we pulled into the dock. Thanks for being awesome, Canada!

Once we were cleared into the country we motored up to Montegue Harbour on Galiano Island. The big attraction there is the Hummingbird Inn Pub. The restaurant runs a shuttle from the dock and its location which has a hilarious and wild bus driver. The food was great and entertainment on point. A guy was playing the accordion, a trumpet, and drumming with his feet at the same time.  What was even better was the fact that we met up with our Professor from boat school, Mike. He was leading a flotilla of boats on a guided tour of sorts, and we slipped into the flotilla for a few days, enjoying the comradery of the small armada of 7 other boats. Mike is a great guy and it was super fun getting to hang out on our boats.  Also, shout to Cliff and Gin and Tonics! It’s always fun when separate adventures cross paths.

Maya at anchor in Montegue Harbor

The following morning we awoke early and were off in order to make our scheduled arrival time at Dodd Narrows, which is a small gap in the land where the ocean tides push water through with great force and current. Thankfully, there is no current when it’s slack tide, so that’s when boats are able to traverse the narrows. We left our anchorage early and arrived to Dodd Narrows right on schedule- no current to speak of. Success!

Motoring though Dodd Narrows

From Dodd, it was a short sail to Nanaimo where we landed in Mark Bay of New Castle Island, which is home to our favorite park and trail run. Seriously, it's the best park! We scored a dock spot for $20 a night which is a steal of deal (especially since it means we could walk the dog so much easier).

Maya at the dock on New Castle Island. Nanaimo is in the background.

We took the day to get a run around the island in, then rewarded ourselves with a beer at the Dinghy Dock Pub! The Pub is actually floating and the only way to get to it is by boat- how fun! Nanaimo is the last big town we will see for the next 6 weeks so we decided to spend another day there to purchase fresh produce and take care of some small errands.

Trailrun on New Castle Island

You see the most interesting boats while cruising!

The following morning, with a calm weather conditions we set off to cross the Strait of Georgia, an 18 mile open water crossing.  Last year, we went on a windy day and it was a rough crossing. This year was much different story as the winds were light and waves small as we made an uneventful crossing to mainland Canada, enroute to Princess Lousia Inlet, which is a world famous boating destination. Famed for its rugged beauty and waterfall displays. The inlet is about 50 miles from the Strait so we anchored in Green Bay for the night, enjoying some SUPing before a large storm brought a torrential downpour, even thunder and lightning (which is a rare thing in the PNW).

Out in the middle of the Strait of Georgia

SUPing in Green Bay

A very nice place to relax

So we will end the blogpost just prior to getting to Princess Louisa Inlet- sorry for the cliff hanger!

Check back soon for a new blog post, or sign up for email updates (if you enter your email in the box on the upper left of the website you will receive an email with every new blog post… ensuring you don’t miss a thing!).

Ok, that does it for now. Thanks so much for stopping by and following our adventure. See you soon!

Cheers!

Here's some more details on Maya's travel stats for this portion of the trip.

Distance Traveled: 111 nautical miles
Time spent motoring/sailing: 22.4 hrs.