Barkley Sound

It started out well enough. Magnus and Ronel had bid adieu on their way to Turtle Island and parts south, and cast off early. We had a few things to finish off, so we left a few hours later. We had a good run up the northwest side of Barkley sound, again motorsailing with the wind dead aft, heading for the fabled Lucky Creek. Of course, they were there already. We checked out the anchoring options and decided to share their space behind Refuge Island.

It was a pretty spot, and well sheltered. They had trouble setting their anchor in the shallower water due to a lot of rock, so had anchored in about 55 feet, but we got a good bite at 30 feet and settled in. We were sitting down for our sundowner when we saw them going for a run in their dinghy, then slow down and eventually stop, rowing quietly.

They had a black bear on the beach. We were a long way away, but we tracked them with camera and binoculars. The bear wandered the beach for a long time before disappearing into the brush, and Magnus and Ronel finally started the motor and came back to the anchorage. They were gobsmacked, they were so close for so long. (Ironically, the next morning a large tourist boat came around looking for the bear. We felt like specimens ourselves in our sailboats as the tourists, many German, waved and smiled as they went past). After congratulating them on their bear-sighting coup, we arranged to share their dinghy on the run up Lucky Creek the next day since it was much faster than our rubber ducky.

In a way, it was a bad choice of destinations at that time, since we had just showered the day before and didn't really need to bathe again so soon, but we really had no idea what we were in for when we made the trip up Lucky Creek the next day. It is only accessible close to high tide because the creek essentially dries at low water, so we had a few shallower spots to avoid with three hours to go before high.It is very interesting boating up small creeks and rivers, you never know what you may find.

As we approached the falls, we saw that there were a couple of people there ahead of us, and they were not wearing anything that could be called clothing. They dressed before we got there, which was fortunate, not that I'm being judgemental at all. We saw that they had left their dinghy at the bottom of the cliff, and did the same, crawling up like a bunch of alpinists. To get to the upper pools we had to strip down to swimsuits and stroke through the cold water to the next spot. It was at this point that Anne discovered the trail to the easy landing below the falls that didn't require swimming.

The water was what Magnus would describe as "refreshing" and what I would describe as "freezing". We all got totally wet, but some were happier with it than others. I liked the parts where we sat on the rocks in the sun with our feet in the water.

Ronel was almost as suspicious of cold water as I was, but was a little braver. She waded in, I had to dive. She swam to the rock shelf and climbed up gracefully, I came up like a chimpanzee dropped into the Arctic Ocean, gibbering and clutching for a foothold on the slippery rocks. For the last four feet I was skittering above the surface like a giant waterbug.

We whiled away the afternoon there, enjoying the sunshine and clean water. It has been described like a Disneyesque creation, a perfect little waterfall. It's true.

Magnus and Ronel climbed back down the cliff to the dinghy, then came and picked us up at the base of the "easy" way in. I thought it was easier, it had a larger knotted rope than the one going up the rock face, but Anne wasn't convinced. I liked it because I couldn't see anything hard at the bottom to land on.

The next morning, they set sail for the Outer Islands in the Broken Group, and we refused to tell them where we were going. Just in case.


(Just kidding. It never hurts to have a doctor in the next boat, even if he wants nothing to do with head injuries incurred while climbing. I wasn't ready to injure myself in his specialty, so we were at a stalemate). 

 We were actually going to the Pinkertons, a small archipelago of islands and reefs just north of the Broken Group, which is a national park. The Pinkertons are private, so there are things like fish farms in some of the best coves, and homes lining the shore in some places. Despite the status of the area, the charting is not all it could be, and we require a lot of guidance in the form of guidebooks. The chart to the left is a prime example of "local knowledge". The red arrow shows a rock in the middle of the channel.

That little dot on the left side of the channel in the photograph is that rock that spans that entire channel on the chart. This appears in none of the guidebooks we have, but seems important, at least to me. Strangely enough, this chart is about as high a resolution as you get for anything on the west coast of the island. Most of it is considerably lower resolution, so we spend a lot of time going slowly and staring at the depth sounder, looking hopeful.

The Pinkertons were damp. No, actually, the Pinkertons were monsoon-like. Anne said there were fountains of rain coming down inside the boat beside the mast. I wouldn't know, I sleep best in a storm.

After a couple of days of staring at rain and fog, we decided to go somewhere else and look at some different rain and fog. Off to Joe's Bay!