July and August are always crowded in our near waters – BC’s Gulf Islands – so we try to make our way north up the coast well before July 1 (the beginning of school holidays).
The first obstacle is always Dodd Narrows, just south of Nanaimo, where the tidal currents reach nine knots. The main hazard is not necessarily the turbulence in this tight passage (which must be negotiated near slack) but rather the crowd of other vessels that may be waiting for the same moment. This time around it was just a tug with a barge weighted down with sawdust, likely bound for the Crofton Mill, near our home.
Once in the open Strait of Georgia we took advantage of a boisterous southeaster to race past Ballenas Island (with its prominent lighthouse) to False Bay, on Lasqueti Island. It’s named “False” because when the peculiar condition known as a Qualicum blasts southwesterly winds into the bay, it provides almost no shelter; the VHF weather forecast bears heeding. This is the site of the main settlement on Lasqueti, which once had a reputation for being the furthest “off grid” of all the islands in the Strait, attracting a motley population of libertarians and dope-smoking hippies.
Dope is now legal and the locals are a lot more conventional these days but it’s still an out-of-the-way island to roam. We took advantage of our pre-season timing to spend a few days in nooks and bays that can be crowded in the high season. We were alone in Deep Bay, off Jedediah Island, where in August there could be half a dozen boats jostling for space in this tiny indentation, where a stern-tie is de rigueur.
Next, we ducked around the south end of Texada Island, spending a restless night at Anderson Bay on its tip, before taking advantage of the continuing southeaster to make our way north up Malaspina Strait and to the edge of Desolation Sound, finding (after a long day) all-round protection in Cortes Bay. Last year in this same location we had made a distressing discovery: a cracked exhaust, which would cut our voyage short and ultimately necessitate extensive (and expensive) re-working of our entire exhaust system. So far, all was well…
We lingered on Cortes for days: there is good shopping at the village of Manson’s Landing, and more 360-degree protection in the capacious waters of Von Donop Inlet, where there is also access to an extensive network of forest trails. A new discovery was Carrington Bay, where a short walk takes you past fast-running reversing rapids (not navigable) to a large inland lagoon.
Working our way onwards on a hot, almost windless morning in Hoskyn Channel, we passed a pod of three orcas (killer whales) nosing their way along the shoreline, then jilled back and forth for a couple of hours off the now abandoned settlement of Surge Narrows waiting – once again – for slack water ahead. Tidal narrows like Dodd and Surge are a feature of the BC coast and are not necessarily dangerous – we’d go through seven sets each way, this summer – but they “open” only twice a day for safe passage, so they are a sometimes frustrating constraint on free and easy sailing.
Now we were approaching the first of two stretches of water where (contrary) northwesters typically kick up for days on end in the summer, turning this part of a passage up-coast into a slog: the north end of Discovery Passage where, at the Chatham Point light, the Passage turns a bend to become Johnstone Strait. We found a one-boat bay at the west end of Okisollo Channel where we could wait and watch for whitecaps – out of the main flow of the wind – and took our chance just after dawn, 36 hours on.
You can duck into the islands once more, out of Johnstone Strait, but eventually there’s no escaping things if you want to get further north. There is a two-mile-wide, fifteen-mile long stretch where, between high mountains on either side, the current in Johnstone is always ebbing to the west (in summer, that is, on account of run-off from glaciers and spring rains). But that dreaded northwest-wind is just as reliable, often setting up dangerous wind-against-current conditions. Key to a tranquil passage is listening to the automatic, hourly wind reports from tiny Fanny Island, in mid-strait. If it’s reporting much above 12 knots, things will be uncomfortable; over 20 knots and even the big boats stay home.
As we waited for Fanny’s regular reports, we reflected how much more useful these automatic reporting stations are than the staffed lighthouses up and down the coast. The manned stations (of which there are 27 in BC, usually with up to three families in residence on a rotating basis) report much less frequently, and with annoyingly long stretches of “not available.” And yet, any time there is talk of economising by automating them, there is public outcry – such is the romantic allure of lighthouses.
The UK long ago went fully automated, as did the USA. There is no sound reason not to follow the same path in Canada. The money saved could be much better invested in expanding and maintaining the automatic stations. Contrary to public understanding, the staff at the lighthouses have no mandate to respond to distress calls and are not equipped to do so; their only roles are weather reporting and sustaining themselves, typically by expensive helicopter runs.
We scuttled past Fanny just in time: once west, and in the complex network of islands and channels known as The Broughtons, there were five successive days of gales; it meant that, for a while, we had the islands almost to ourselves, as following boats waited for a similar chance.
We wended our way through silent, steep-sided Tribune Channel, making a pit-stop at one of the only the few resort/marinas still to function in these waters – the very short season, combined with closures forced by Covid, has led to the demise of a number of such stops. 
Sullivan Bay is a small floating village, with fuel available, a small shop, and even a restaurant: expensive, but a welcome change from on-boat cooking. There’s even a one-hole golf-course: the “green” is a small square of astroturf on a platform floating fifty metres offshore. Score a hole-in-one and, so the rumour goes, you stay for free (it’s just a rumour because it’s never actually been done).
Contributing further to the depopulation of the islands, the once abundant salmon farms in the Broughtons have now been closed down by law, as a result of a determination that their contamination of wild stocks (in the form of sea lice) outweighs their commercial benefits. The ban remains controversial; while many indigenous groups support it, others have lost a significant source of jobs. Unfortunately, defunct farms and their extensive infrastructure, continue to clog parts of otherwise choice anchorages, but we had quiet nights now at locations that a decade or so were off-limits.
We ventured finally into the quietest and furthest inlet of the Broughtons: Drury. There’s yet another set of narrows to negotiate, so this means it is often empty. The waters were mirror-still, such that it was difficult to see where reflection and reality met. There’s a once-functional resort here – Jennis Bay – but it’s now just the base for a single local fishing boat. Drury has a colourful history: Bughouse Bay commemorates a deranged homesteader who, in the 1920s, eventually had to be restrained from attacking those who had cause to visit him, and was removed to an asylum. Black bears roam the shoreline at this time of year, despondently turning over rocks to see what they can find, awaiting the end-of-summer salmon runs on which they will feast.
Leaving Drury under sail at three knots we spotted another pod of orcas, 200 metres away. They disappeared – and then suddenly reappeared. Dramatically. Quite literally within touching distance, parallel to our hull, a huge male surfaced, reared up and splashed back into the water – soaking us in the cockpit. Was he warning us off? Did he perhaps think our silent hull as some threatening creature? Our hearts beat faster for several minutes.
From Drury, we wended our way slowly home, always looking for new anchorages that we had not tried before. We passed the small native village of Health Bay, and beyond it the eerie, long abandoned community of Karlukwees, once the site of fifteen or more longhouses but now all-but devoured by the forest.
Johnstone Strait east and south-bound was – of course – a romp, with the wind now astern. But as we neared home waters once again we paused in Tribune Bay, on Hornby Island, and were reminded of why it is a good idea to skip the Gulf Islands at this time of year: there must have been 120 or more boats at anchor, many of them of great size and opulence, a number running their generators all night. And at Dodd Narrows this time, it wasn’t just a single tug and tow in the passage, but a line-up of some fifty or more vessels at each end, awaiting the ten minutes or so of safe passage that slack would afford them.
Happily, we reached home without a single wobble in the exhaust – let’s hope it stays that way.