rough around the edges Albin 25

[WillieC]

I am sure I provided plenty of colorful commentary on our first few attempts at stern tying. We recently got front row seating at Butchart Gardens in the little cove with the five "free" buoys. It was the the day of the final fireworks show of the year and we couldn't believe our good fortune, with only one other boat on a buoy there. I was unclear on the concept of "free with price of admission" but I am a quick study. And it has been a few decades since we had been to see the gardens so it was all good.

Anyhow, like you say, it is fun watching others learn the process. One of our cove neighbors was departing on Sunday morning and I couldn't figure out why he had to launch his dinghy to untie from the shore. Apparently he had used two lines and tied each to the ring on shore. It looked good from our vantage point without binoculars, but they have a ways to go on the learning curve. I refrained from teaching but hope they get help before the next trip. Tides often leave the shore rings, or other methods, inaccessible when it's time to go. Another neighbor on a private mooring there was a firm believer in the tight line theory. As in bowstring tight. I was worried his boat was going to be suspended in the air or the tree he tied to would be laying in the water come morning. Differnt strokes...

[ssrig]

I'm sure there are many fun stories about stern tying, one on this trip that was funny was in Roscoe Cove, it is a cove that you need a high tide to enter. Well this Catamaran gets in at a high tide anchors in a shoal area so he moves to a spot that is deeper while the tide went out and ties his stern line to a fallen tree that is partially submerged. Next day they need to leave and it is high tide and his stern line is under six feet of water, tied off! He went swimming and untied it.....

Eagle


Entering Uganda Passage around Shark Spit. We left Teakerne Arm and circumnavigated Cortez Island and stayed in Von Donop Inlet but took no pictures?

[ssrig]

Whale we saw just outside of Von Donop.

[ssrig]

We had a perfect day with a low tide and calm conditions to visit Shark Spit.


We collected some clams here then went over to Mansons Landing for the night. There is a lake a short walk from here.

[ssrig]

Mansons Landing, very nice beach here. Thats our white dingy on the beach with the boat in the background.

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One more Albin we saw in Powell River.

[ssrig]

On our way south we spotted some islets with some blobs on it so went to investigate, sea lions!



I shut down the engine and drifted around for a while to watch them, we slowly drifted towards them and we had a nice and up close encounter with them. As we started up to leave a bunch of them jumped into the water and followed us around for a while, fun!

[DesertAlbin736]

Stunning photos! Puts all the ones I took up there to shame! Especially the whale. Here's a few from Roscoe Bay. It's all "Forest Primeval" up there.

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Of course the trick with stern tie lines, if you have enough length & are close enough to shore to do it, is loop the line around the ring, log, or whatever attachment point, and double it back to the boat. So when you go to leave just turn loose the bitter end and pull the line back aboard. Unless it snags on something you don't to dinghy back to shore and fotch around with untying a line that might either be a climb up rocks & over logs to get up to or else under water.

[ssrig]

DA, most of the pictures are taken with my iphone so that posting is easy on this site but many of our good pictures are taken with a decent telephoto camera but this site doesn't host them so I use Flickr as the host site.

Stern tying, we have over 500' of stern line and used most of it many times while tying up when we do the loop thing which really uses up some line initially until things get tightened up, and I know many boats out there just don't have that much line, like that Catamaran, soooo, they tie on to something on land.

Being a small boat we always snuck in real close to the head of the bay to anchor where a short dingy ride to shore was nice, in that dingy picture you posted there is a trawler there with a blue or black hull where we would be, or further in.
Yup, clothing optional there sometimes, it was pretty busy when we were there so that was limited, Hague Lake on Cortez has another spot for skinny dipping and is more active. The lakes up there are a very nice to swim in, very clean and clear and we didnt go too far from any of them, it was pretty hot when we were up there.

[ssrig]

After one month up in Desolation Sound we decided to start heading home with one last stop in what I have read many times termed as "The Holy Grail" of sailing, Princess Louisa Inlet!
I was up there in 1991 but my wife has never been so off we go.
We stopped into Powell River for the night and next day positioned ourselves at Harmony Islands in Jervis inlet for an early morning departure.



Harmony Islands are a new marine park that have not really been found by the cruisers yet. This waterfall tumbles down into pools that you can have a dip in.



I had to depart Harmony at 5 AM to catch the flood tide and slack at Malibu Rapids, it was pitch black when I woke up to get going and had to use a spotlight to work my way out from the anchorage we nestled into, and being low tide showed how many rocky reefs we were surrounded by but I did get out using the track line from the chart plotter that was still stored on screen.

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Morning shot entering entering Jervis inlet.

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On the dock, Chatterbox falls.

[DesertAlbin736]

Ives, you got to spend twice as much time in Desolation Sound as Rick & I did last year, a month vs two weeks. And did Princess Louisa/Malibu Rapids/Chatterbox in the same trip. Bravo! Rick & I took a different route to get up there last year, instead of crossing from Nanaimo to Smuggler we stayed on the Vancouver side up to Comox with a stopover at Deep Bay, then crossed the Strait directly to Grace Harbour. Comox is an interesting place, nice marina, good launch ramp, and "grids" where sailboats with deep full keels can rent space on these "grids" and tie up at high tide (preferably spring tide days), let the tide go out, clean bottoms or other types of bottom work, as long as they get it done before the next tide comes in. Like this:

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I've talked before about our 2016 dinghy misadventure off Nelson Island, which along with problems our cruise mates had with their boat led to cancelling Plan A for Desolation Sound and opting for Princess Louisa as Plan B. Since we were traveling in company with our Arizona sailboat friends he shot these pictures of us on the way up Agamemnon Channel, Prince of Wales Reach, and Princess Louisa.

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He also rendered the same shot in B&W:

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And I cropped it like this. At this point we were sans dinghy after it was lost when the snap davit latch ripped out. This is one of my favorite shots of our boat. The flag under the US flag at the stern is the state flag of Arizona. Our friends went back there this year along with the other sailboat couple from Arizona, and this time were able to get most of the way up purely under sail, a downwind run with sails set "wing & wing".

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Then he shot this one of us in front of Chatterbox Falls

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And we took this one of their boat...

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Sharing it with friends made the experience all the more special.

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So next year who's up for?....

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[ssrig]

We stayed in Princess Louisa for two nights then headed back to Harmony Islands for a night and there were six boats anchored at the islands plus us, on the way up we were by ourselves here.





Standard Chatterbox Falls picture.




On the way out we found the petroglyphs.

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Malibu rapids at slack.

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After Harmony Islands we motored over to Egmont, tied up to the govenrment dock and hiked out to the Skookumchuck Rapids in flood, these rapids have the record of 16.5 knots current, and watched the kayakers for a while.


After Skookumchuck we headed over to Smugglers cove and waited an extra night for decent weather for our crossing of the Straight.



We crossed early in the morning with some pretty heavy rains and made Nanaimo for the night at the Nanaimo Port Authority so we could go celebrate my wifes birthday, another early morning for me the next day to get the slack at Dodds Narrows and stayed at Wallace Island for the night then home.

Smugglers cove sunset.

[dkirsop]

Great pictures Yves, you have truly captured much of the beauty to be found in cruising the waters of the Discovery Islands and Northern Georgia Straight.

[DesertAlbin736]

....and stayed at Wallace Island for the night then home.

Did you happen to get a chance to hang a board or piece of driftwood with your boat's name on the wall of the old resort building?

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[ssrig]

Great pictures Yves, you have truly captured much of the beauty to be found in cruising the waters of the Discovery Islands and Northern Georgia Straight.

Thank you Mr Kirsop! capturing the beauty is easy when its all around us.

[ssrig]

Do you mean like this one we found?

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I stayed at Wallace Island for almost three weeks in total but didn't put up a sign yet.... we found a piece of drift wood to get it done but had no good way of writing onto it so we brought it home and will get one up next year, we live on Salt Spring Island right next to Wallace so its a short trip.