{"id":374,"date":"2006-08-10T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2006-08-10T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/?p=374"},"modified":"2009-04-15T08:58:12","modified_gmt":"2009-04-15T13:58:12","slug":"s_logs-dashew-dashew287","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/s_logs-dashew-dashew287\/","title":{"rendered":"Local Knowledge"},"content":{"rendered":"
Not trusting the cruising guide, Steve and Linda rely on local knowledge and their own observations in order to make their way through some tricky passages and find a safe place to anchor for the night.<\/div>\n

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We like to have as much local information as possible wherever we are cruising. Nowadays there are often several cruising guides for each area, and it is hard to know in advance which is the best – and which to avoid. For this part of the world we’ve found the Douglass’s series of guides from Fine Edge Productions to be excellent. However, for some reason we missed their publication covering Northern British Columbia, and so had to rely on "Northwest Boat Travel". The latter has some basic information, but needs to be taken with a healthy dose of skepticism as we have found the authors often speak in a tone of certainty when reality is quite different, at least from our perspective.<\/p>\n

We’ve also got charts marked up with comments by various folks we’ve met along the way. As mentioned in the past, we feel more comfortable when we have several different sources of information on any given area.<\/p>\n

Which brings us to the end of a long day’s trip south from Prince Rupert. We’d had an anchorage marked by locals at the entrance to Helnecken Inlet on the south end of Princess Royal Island. Northwest Boat Travel promised even better conditions inside the inlet.<\/p>\n

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Here is a vector chart image of the inlet. Smithers Island partially blocks the entrance, and the anchorage is on the south (bottom) side of the island. It was way too tight for our liking.<\/p>\n

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By now we are used to tight entrances. We pull the booms inboard so they won’t snag on the trees, and then proceed slowly, typically down mid-channel.<\/p>\n

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We’ve got an easy 16 feet (5m) of clearance on each side of Wind Horse<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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There was plenty of water beneath us, and as we had a light ebbing current, steering control was easy. (We always prefer to go through tight places against the current as speed over the bottom is reduced, while there is still enough velocity through the water to give us control.)<\/p>\n

Once inside we were impressed with the aesthetics, but the promised shallow anchorage areas failed to materialize. The 80- to 100-foot (24 to 30m) depths were not a problem. We handle that with ease. What bothered us was the lack of swinging room, even on two-to-one scope. The shore looked very rocky, with little soil, so the odds were the bottom would be the same.<\/p>\n

After exploring for an hour we were not comfortable with the situation. The ebb was still present, and we did not like running with it back out the narrow entrance, but we considered this the lesser of two evils, and exited without problem.<\/p>\n

That left the question of where to next? We had a little under two hours of daylight left, so we wanted to make sure the next anchorage was a good one. Using the same local cruiser’s input and the same cruising guide, we selected Corney Cove, a little over an hour distant.<\/p>\n

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The chart above shows that the anchorage (projecting north from the channel) should be well protected. <\/p>\n

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The detail and data we had acquired from our two sources, indicated good holding in 30 to 40 feet (9 to 13m),<\/p>\n

Well, reality, to us at least, was different. There were some shallow spots, but they were so close to shore as to not leave us room to swing if the breeze switched. In calm conditions this would be OK – and nothing was forecast – but we were still not comfortable.<\/p>\n

It was now an hour before local sunset. The next possibility was 12 miles to the north. We decided to head that way as it looked really good on the chart (we had no local knowledge this time).<\/p>\n

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Because of time constraints we decided to take Thistle Passage, shown on the right (east) of the chart above. It is narrow, but except for the one shoal spot marked, it appeared pretty straightforward. As we were now on a rising tide, risk factors were reduced relative to running aground. In the open areas we maintained a 12.5 knot speed, slowing down to six knots in the one narrow, shallow spot (least depth was 16 feet\/5m).<\/p>\n

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This vector chart detail of Alston Cove will give you a feel for the approach. We also had the detailed Canadian paper chart to check – which required a magnifying glass to see the depths in the channel.<\/p>\n

The sun had already set behind the mountains to the west when we entered. However, the twilight provided plenty of visibility to see what was ahead of us. We entered slowly, staying a little to the south (right) side of the channel where the shoal (green) area is shown on the chart.<\/p>\n

This is a lovely cove, very secure, with good holding and lots of room to swing. There is a stream at the head of the bay, extensive drying flats, and probably a lot of wildlife to watch at low tide. We were very happy to have a secure anchorage for the night.<\/p>\n

There was also a fallback plan in case this did not work out. The channels in this area appeared clear of debris, so we felt we could have steamed slowly on our course south should this be deemed the better option. Running at five knots would give us twice the time to get the engines stopped if we hit something – ten seconds, compared to five seconds at eleven knots. Also, we had radar to help us detect larger debris, and a full moon for visibility.<\/p>\n

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The next morning brought low tide. Looking out the passage we were surprised to see this large shoal projected out from the north side of the entrance. Go back and look at the vector chart image, to see if you get a feeling this is present. The detailed Canadian chart does not do any better. But then, that is why we moved to the south of the channel coming in, why we came in on a rising tide, and why we were going very slowly. Every now and then one is bound to make a mistake…<\/p>\n

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Here is the radar image on our way back out. You can see the red trace of our track inbound, and compare how the radar image of that projecting shoal compares to the photo.<\/p>\n

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We could have lingered here for many days. But we are on a mission to dry out, and so heading towards the sun. We know it will feel good to be warm and dry for a while. But we’ll miss this lighting and cloud cover.<\/p>\n

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Timing means a lot when you are cruising. When we headed north up the Queen Charlotte Sound we had the remnants of a southerly gale to push us on our way and create a few nice waves for surfing. Now we’ve got a fresh northwesterly speeding us in the opposite direction and this trawler is fighting its way against the waves towards the shelter of Fitzhugh Sound.<\/p>\n

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It doesn’t look like much fun, but in a five or six hours they’ll be in protected waters.<\/p>\n

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Meanwhile, Wind Horse <\/em>is loving the steep seas churned up by the opposing current. And it is getting warmer by the hour.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Not trusting the cruising guide, Steve and Linda rely on local knowledge and their own observations in order to make …Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dashew-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}