Sailing The Northwest Coast of Vancouver Island

Last week we rounded Cape Scott and tucked into Sea Otter Cove on the northwestern coast of Vancouver Island. We spent the night being jostled by surprising gusts, but come morning things had calmed down and we left early, eager to keep sailing south. What a beautiful morning! Here we go, day two on the west coast. We got up at seven in the morning because the wind is going to increase from now on, but yeah, not really according to forecast. It is milder than it was predicted, which is very pleasant. Engine's off, we're doing four and a half, five knots, that's good with me. And now we have outflow coming from Vancouver Island, which I also didn't expect. Yeah, we have to get it, get to know it all. Fog bank pretty persistent, it's right there just waiting to get its ground back, but yeah, the winds are just pushing it off slightly and we have clear horizon ahead. It's going to be a 25 nautical mile day and now we'll have coffee number two and a slice of bread with marmalade. We are sailing towards Quatsino Sound, an inlet that journeys deep into the remote northern end of Vancouver Island. There are many inlets which cut into this west coast and we don't have time to explore them all, so we had to choose. And Quatsino Sound made a strong case for itself. There are some interesting rivers that we want to explore and plus at the very end of the inlet is Vancouver Island's most remote pub. That sealed the deal, so we sailed downwind towards Winter Harbor, a small outpost at the mouth of Quatsino Sound. Here we go, not quite enough sail at first, a little too much sail a little after. But yeah, five nautical miles to go on the ocean leg and then it's still five nautical miles kind of in the inlet portion, if we are indeed going to Winter Harbor, but maybe laundry and seeing what provisions they have is not a bad idea. And we just gybed, headed straight for the inlet's entrance. It was quite exhilarating to surf some waves. Right now I rolled up the Yankee just to take it at a more relaxed pace. We're doing six knots now. We were, yeah, doing seven, touching eight and a half on some surfs, which was exciting. Yeah, beautiful day. I'm glad we have visibility, no fog and sunshine. What a morning. It was really beautiful out there and the sailing was so lovely. The boat did so well. It just felt so solid and stable. I mean, it's not like there was a ton of swell, but there was enough that, you know, if we were on magic carpet one we would have been quite uncomfortable, but it was a really comfortable ride. I definitely did not sleep well at all last night. Sea Otter Cove, where we were anchored, was supposed to be quite a well-protected anchorage and I think it is if you are a motorboat with a shallower draft, but it's a very shallow bay and so we were only able to just go like into the very sort of entrance of it. We weren't able to really progress into the full protection of the bay. And so it got pretty windy and pretty choppy last night and I didn't sleep super well in the early morning. But anyway, hold myself together. We're going into a dock now. We are going to Winter Harbor. We have not done any provisioning for about a month and I'm actually really proud of our provisioning that we did in Port Hardy. That was the last time we got groceries. We've been eating really well, super fresh. We've still got cabbage, we've still got, you know, like lots of onions, garlics, apples, a few carrots in the fridge. So we haven't been suffering, but I'm really excited to see what they have. I don't think it's like a massive provisioning spot, you know. I don't even think there's very much in the way of fresh produce, but it'll still be nice to peruse the store and fill in any gaps in our pantry at this point. And laundry. We also haven't done laundry in a month, so that'll also be good. We still have lots of seafood though. Yeah, lots of salmon and lingcod to get through. But yeah, Winter Harbor. I think now it's mostly a fishing destination. Yeah, I see traffic all the time. Fishing boats going in and out here of Quetzino Sound. Yeah, I'm excited to see it. That was maybe one of the warmest welcomes we've had in a harbor. That was so sweet. So we, there's all these different harbors along the shoreline and on Navionics, several of them were marked as public. And so we were just like, okay, well we'll just pick one. Came up and as we approached I'm like, I don't know if this is a public dock. Like it seems maybe more like a private docks. We weren't really sure. And then we walked up to go find someone to talk to. And this guy, Wayne was there. He was so nice. It's his dock, I think, but it's also kind of a public dock. Like he, you know, lets people come in. And we were asking him about the store here because we heard that they don't have a ton of fresh stuff. And we were wondering like what fresh stuff they do have. And he's like, honestly, they don't have a lot, but here. I just had a charter that I was hosting and they left behind a bunch of fresh veggies. So he just gave us two bags full of fresh vegetables. So nice of him. I can't believe it. He wouldn't let us pay for them. Oh, I see an avocado in there. Yeah, there's an avocado, there's little cucumbers. So I made this bread this morning. So we're going to bring him some It's not easy to get to Winter Harbor by land. It's pretty far from any major town, and the only way in is via a long dirt road. But this also gives it a lot of character. We walked alongside the waterfront boardwalk in the evening, where signs of the past existed alongside the present. What is going on here? Those are good ones. Wow. Thank you. Good morning. We left Winter Harbor a little while ago and now we are just motoring down Quatsinos Sound. Not really any wind out here, so I haven't been filming a lot yet. But I think where we're going tonight is going to be really interesting. We are headed towards Varney Bay, and Varney Bay is sort of just after a very narrow tidal pass that we will have to go through. The tidal pass is at 4.30 in the afternoon, or that's when slack water is, so that's the safe time for us to be going through the tidal pass. Varney Bay looks really interesting. There's apparently like a river with a canyon that you can kayak or row up at high water. So we're going through at high slack, so once we set the hook, there's hopefully going to be enough water for us to go explore the river a little bit. Alright, we have just entered into the narrower part of the channel. So the real rapids are right at the end of this channel, still two nautical miles away, but we're already seeing some current. We're about an hour early for slack tide, so we're sort of just gonna slowly putz along. Aladino might do some jigging, and then when the time comes we'll continue heading up the channel. We are very much in Vancouver Island now, which is kind of neat. Ha, well done captain! Well that was very uneventful, which is good for passes. Yeah, still actually a couple of minutes early, but I didn't notice hardly any current. And we are going to tuck around this island though into Varney Bay. Let's go have a look at this marble river. Safely anchored in Varney Bay, we set out to explore the river. Struggling upriver like a salmon? Yes. Yeah, now we're going with it for a little bit. This is cool. It's shallow though. I can see at low tide this is not going to dry out. Oh, there's the seals. They like the salmon too. Hey, there's seals again. You know what I noticed is there's been very few seals since being on the west coast. It's all been sea otters. Yeah, that's right. But now we're sort of inland a little bit. Yeah. Up ahead, the river darkened. Our eyes had to adjust to the shadows, and when they did, we realized that we were not alone. Seals lounged on the dark cliff faces, staring us down. You can see the current gets quite a bit faster, so this might be the turning point. It's going to be a fun ride downstream. We barely will have to do anything. What about what is around the next corner? I know. It's also getting shallow. Yeah. So all around us, the world shimmered. The water caught the evening light, the trees overhead gently stirred, and we floated effortlessly back towards our floating home. In a moment of realization, I looked around and thought about how far we were from the years spent in the boatyard. I know you've seen this shot before, at the start of this video, at the end of last video, but I'm going to use it again because it is one of my favorite shots of the entire season. To me, it so perfectly captures the feeling of being here. The peace, the beauty, the comfort of coming home in unfamiliar places. Join us next week as we travel to the very end of this inlet, to a very small logging town named Holberg, which contains Vancouver Island's most remote pub. And then we have to journey all the way out. We have traveled very far into the inner reaches of Vancouver Island, but we must once again reach the coast and continue our southbound voyage. But the journey in is never the same as the journey out. We see new things and we experience some more of the fog that Vancouver Island is famous for. After that, we round Brooks Peninsula. That will be a really, really fascinating voyage because it requires some careful planning. Brooks is a really interesting spot because it's geologically quite unique from the rest of Vancouver Island. It also has the highest cougar population around these parts. That is all still to come. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for watching. 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