Posts In The “North America Pacific Coast” Category
After a week spent over Christmas in Desolation Sound, we traveled south on Boxing Day to Princess Louisa Inlet. We considered stopping for the night at the Harmony Islands, but were eager to see Chatterbox Falls that day, so we forged ahead. It was very cold, but the mountains were so magnificent that we bundled…
In the winter of 2002, rather than our usual trip to the Gulf Islands, we instead traveled to Desolation Sound. Upon learning of our trip, everyone’s first question is always about the weather. It was cold of course — we did not spend any time sitting around in shorts — but we saw very little…
We traditionally spend Thanksgiving in the San Juan Islands. On the way up this year, we encountered a Navy chopper quite near the water surface practicing rescue maneuvers using a buoy just off Port Townsend. We could see it in the binoculars a long way off and could not figure out what it could possibly…
In the summer of 2002, we traveled to the Hakai Luxvbalis Conservancy Area (formerly designated as the Hakai Recreation Area). Hakai is on BC’s central coast, off Queen Charlotte Sound north of Vancouver Island. It’s roughly 400 nautical miles from Seattle and 200 miles from the Alaska border. Encompassing close to 123,000 hectares, Hakai is…
One morning, with the wind blowing between 30 and 40 knots from the north, we decided to find out just how rough Johnstone Strait was with an opposing max ebb current. We would discover that it was both “not so bad” and “really, really awful”—all depending upon location. We put on our inflatable PFDs, had…
When Daylight Saving Time gives our Friday evening daylight cruising period a big boost, we begin to range farther north and south of our typical winter cruising ground of the middle Puget Sound. In late April of 2002, we returned to Quartermaster Harbor which juts into the southern shore of Vashon Island and is roughly…
Those who have gone boating since the events of 9/11 have undoubtedly discovered that the waters and naval bases of the Puget Sound and surrounding areas are now much more heavily guarded than in the past, with pleasure craft coming under substantial scrutiny. If you haven’t been out since then, you will find that we…